Gundam SEED: Tales of the Cosmic Era
by Sgt. NoOb
Summary: Follow the stories of both ZAFT and OMNI as their soldiers wage war across the Earth Sphere, from CE 70 to CE 74. Individual stories per chapter, with a good number based off actual Cosmic Era events.
1. Chapter 1: Victoria's First Memory

_**Author's Note:**_

_This fanfic is to write upon some of the events in Gundam SEED and SEED Destiny that are not touched upon or mentioned in-series, but their dates are listed on GundamWikia and are thus treated as part of canon. They are therefore based upon actual happenings in the Cosmic Era universe, but the events within them are open to interpretation. This fanfic is also an attempt at showcasing a "what-if" of all sides involved in the wars, and how some of the events within the show might have come to be._

**Gundam SEED: Tales from the Bloody Valentine War**

**Chapter 1: Victoria's First Memory **

**CE 70 March 8****th****, Stable Orbit over South Africa, Earth**

**Morning 05 45**

A fleet of twelve _Laurasia_-class frigates, escorted by ten _Nazca_-class destroyers, slowly moved into position. Under them, the Earth continued turning on its axis, and the continent of Africa came into view.

"This is ZAFT Operation Command to all units. The operation will be commencing in thirty seconds," the operator's voice sounded out over the general intercom, a clear beacon in a sea of radio signals. "All drop units take your positions."

Another voice interrupted the procession. "OMNI fleet detected at eight thousand kilometres from the _Survive_, bearing one-three-eight at a twenty-degree decline from the centre of the fleet axis. Counting eighteen _Drake_-class escorts, nine _Agamemnon_-class carriers, and twelve _Nelson_-class battleships." A short pause in the channel, then "Mobile armour launch from all OMNI vessels have been detected. _Survive_ and _Black Dragon _have both confirmed usage of OMNI fleet attack pattern zero-zero-four."

"This is ZAFT Operation Command to the interceptor fleet. Prepare for anti-ship and anti-mobile armour combat. I repeat, prepare for anti-ship and anti-mobile armour combat. Fleet Alert Alpha Red has been declared. All _Laurasia_-class frigates are to continue with the drop operation; once complete they are to assist the guard fleet in repelling all enemy forces from this region."

The _Nazca_-class destroyers leapt forward as their powerful engines propelled the capital destroyers to meet the fleet head on, the ships aligning themselves into an arrowhead formation. Mobile Suits began streaming from their frontal catapults. Specks of light from the thrusters of mobile suits and mobile armours met in space, and explosions began to dot the darkness of space.

The _Survive _opened fire, and the Alliance fleet answered in earnest. The fleet battle was as every bit as fierce as the battle in between mobile suit and mobile armour, as both fleets closed to within firing distance of each other.

"This is the _Pride of Aprilius_, we have taken heavy damage to our engines and are unable to maintain a stable trajectory; I repeat, we have-"

"_Survive_, down! No escape pods detected!"

"Second wave of mobile armours approaching our mobile suits! Third wave of mobile armours en route for the fleet!"

"This is Espada Squadron, we are commencing an attack run on the Alliance fleet-"

A stray missile streaked past the bridge of the _Laurasia_-class frigate _Seventh Heaven_; its captain averted his eyes at the explosion, and reached for the ship's comm unit. "This is Orbital drop Command to ZAFT Operation Command," his rough voice sounded out. "Orbital drop is clear to engage."

"Roger Orbital Drop Command. Orbital drop commencing in 5…"

"4…"

"3…"

"2…"

"1…"

"Orbital Drop commence," the rough voice sounded out for the last time on the Orbital Drop Command channel. "Good luck, warriors of ZAFT."

**CE 70 March 8****th****, Victoria Supercomplex, Lake Victoria, South Africa, Earth**

**Morning 05 54**

"Contact with the first layer. Deceleration at Mach 4," the operator's voice sounded out over the orbital drop squadrons and teams' general-use channel, slight static marring the quality of the sound. "Angle is good, 28 seconds until cool-down enforcement. Commencing clip control."

"Alpha One to all units," a male voice said, "approximately four layers confirmed." He exhaled and inhaled again, slowly. He felt vibrations throughout his whole body as the ZAFT-made orbital drop pod for mobile suits forced a path through Earth's upper atmosphere. The cockpit thermometers jumped upwards by another six degrees Celsius from a whooping fifty-nine.

"Bravo Two," another voice with a slight drawl joined the squadron channel.

"Charlie Three," a softer voice reported, with a hint of hardness to its quality.

"Delta Four," a baritone voice emerged over the static of the comm unit.

"Contact with the second outer layer confirmed," Alpha One reported. "Let's show those bastards what we've got in store for them."

The red-hot air streaming from the side of the pod slowly dissipated, and Alpha One watched the thermometer as the cockpit temperature decreased steadily. Beside the atmospheric re-entry pod that Alpha One's team used, three more shot through the morning air, steam streaming off their smooth, curved surfaces.

As Alpha One's team descended, the re-entry pod fell out of cloud cover completely, and across the sky, re-entry pods rained down as ZAFT embarked on their first landing operation on Earth. Their goal was the Habilis Mass Driver, the Eurasian Federation and the South African Union's work of unity, and one of OMNI's primary means of commerce and military traffic. The waters of Victoria Lake, the gigantic body of water on which the mass driver was built, glistened as the first rays of the morning sun reflected off their surfaces.

Built around the Habilis complex that was anchored to the bottom of the lake was the Victoria Supercomplex. The pride of the Eurasian Federation, OMNI's second largest partner and sponsor, the massive collection of military structures and defences spread out from the Habilis Mass Driver like a concrete and steel flower; its circumference was roughly fifty kilometres wide, with roads leading from Lake Victoria's shores into the main housing of the base structures.

Hangars surrounded the main housing in a ring formation, within them stored nearly four hundred military jets of various make at any given time. ZAFT Intelligence had revealed several dozen anti-air emplacements scattered around the base, and from his height Alpha One could see more roads leading out to outposts, which were in turn guarded by even more anti-air emplacements and elements of the OMNI Land Army.

The only thing that gnawed away at Alpha One's sixth sense were the odd dual-ringed circles that adorned the edges and several places of the Victoria Supercomplex, slightly over thirty metres in diameter, and decorated with the geometrical lines that spoke of composite material armouring within the circles. ZAFT Intel had been unable to deduce their worth; storage tanks were an odd guess, and if anything, Alpha One was sure that no helicopter existed in the Earth sphere that required a helipad that big. Perhaps it was a specialized surface platform leading into an underground hangar…

"Exiting outer layer," Alpha One continued, trying to ignore the apprehension building up within him at the sight of the massive military complex. "Deceleration at Mach zero-point-nine, stopping cool-down. Position is ideal."

Alpha One gripped the mobile suit's control sticks tighter. "May the heavens smile upon us," He checked the numbers displayed on the screen. "Landing coordinates confirmed."

Alpha One looked at the picture of his wife and child whom he left behind at the PLANTs, taped to a small empty space on the GINN cockpit's front instrument display. This would be for their sake. He would not fail. "It's time. Let's go!"

"For ZAFT," Bravo Two said.

"For ZAFT!" Charlie Three joined in.

"For ZAFT." Delta Four said, his face locked in an expression of fury, although no one could see him.

"Good luck, gentlemen of Longbow Squadron," Alpha One said. "Engaging combat manoeuvre plan 11-G, all weapons free." He closed the comms.

The landing pod's locks blew open, and pieces of the pod's outer shell fell apart and away from the four GINNs it housed in its centre. The securing locks to the mobile suits disengaged, and the GINNs fell from the pod's main shaft and brought themselves up to full power. Around him, Bravo Two, Charlie Three and Delta Four's re-entry pods did the same, and the twelve GINNs scattered as warning sirens in their cockpits wailed, the sign of enemy tracking signals.

"Alpha One to team," Alpha One said. "Spread out; there's bound to be thick anti-air cover coming soon. Stay tight."

Alpha One descended across the sky; his four team members and wingmen toggled their acknowledgement lights once, three green flashing dots on his helmet display, as they spread across the sky, random evasion patterns ready to be executed.

Around him hundreds of his comrades did the same; ZAFT GINNs rained down upon Lake Victoria, 76mm machine cannons blazing. As the distance to ground rapidly closed, the Alliance answered with their own missile units, tanks, anti-air vehicles and stationary defences; the air filled with streaks of tracers and missile trails by the thousands. Everywhere Alpha One looked, he could only see bright flashes of light as the anti-air rounds cut through the air.

Alpha One moved the controls, and his GINN twisted its body to the left to avoid a heavy anti-air round, thrusters flaring wildly as Alpha One fought to keep the GINN stable. An explosion filled the screen as he focused his aim on the incoming missile from his left. He turned to his right just in time to see a fellow GINN get hit face-on with a missile; the unit tumbled out of control from the impact, pieces of unidentified parts flying off the unfortunate mobile suit. Alpha One saw from the corner of his eye another missile chase after the tumbling GINN.

Alpha One had no time to spare for fallen comrades. Giving his IFF list the quickest of glances, he saw Alpha One-Two's signal flash yellow; an indication of damage. Moments later it flashed red, and "Signal Lost" replaced "A1-2" on the IFF tab. One comrade lost. Alpha One-Two had been a pilot that he had trained and bunked with during his academy days in ZAFT, and the two had memories together that were too painful to lose.

Gritting his teeth, he sprayed 76mm cannon fire to his front. Across the sky hundreds of GINNs did the same, and one by one the Alliance positions begun to fall silent; there were too many of them, however, and the closer to the ground, the more Alpha One realized that they were going to miss the Supercomplex by a lot, taking them to the edges of a forest south of the lake, lined by several small cliffs that ended the treeline, edged the vegetation.

Alpha-One fired the GINN's massive back thrusters; while they provided great power, the GINN was equally heavy due to its mass, and Alpha One gritted his teeth as the entire mobile suit shook like a possessed giant. He knew that the GINN had slowed to a crawl through the air, and silently prayed that some bright OMNI soldier wouldn't mark him as a target for a Linear Tank or Artillery to take pot shots at. Soon enough, he was on the ground, safe from missiles and anti-air fire, but exposed to other dangers.

Alpha One allowed himself a brief and silent cheer of victory when the operator's voice sounded out again, this time over the general channel. "This is ZAFT Ground Operation Command to all units; incoming reinforcements from Map Point E-4 spotted by Glaive Squadron. They're marked as tank forces. Aquila and Bayonet squadrons are advised to divert their attention to Point E-4 to intercept."

Alpha One winced as a GINN that was landing beside him took a hit from a Linear Tank to its leg, the explosion causing his unit's screens to fuzz for a moment. Alpha One-Four's IFF flashed yellow.

Alpha One moved to cover his fallen comrade, firing at the OMNI lines with his rifle. The ammo counter continued counting down as he opened a channel to Alpha One-Four, and empty shells streamed from the rifle's right ejection port as it spat out the equivalent of cannon shells at 100 rounds per minute, far faster than any Alliance-made light cannon could manage. "Alpha One-Four! Report your status!"

"I'm fine," Alpha One-Four replied, even as Alpha One-Three landed beside and moved to provide covering fire. "Continue the push! If we take Victoria Spaceport, we can begin on the path to securing the Earth!"

Alpha One left Alpha One-Four's machine lying on the ground, as the damaged GINN propped itself up with one arm and continued firing its rifle with the other. Alpha One fired the thrusters on his unit, with Alpha One-Three following, as the GINNs skidded across the muddy ground, dodging tank fire and returning the favour with 76mm rounds. Ejecting the empty clip, Alpha One-Three's GINN slammed a fresh one into the gun and continued firing, the bullet trails etching a path of explosions as they stitched a path across the dirt and over the occasional vehicle or pillbox. Those were not as advanced as the turret systems in the base he had spied while still in the air; _perhaps they weren't done upgrading, which if that's the case, we had better end this battle quick,_ Alpha One thought.

Linear tanks started rolling out of the forest and from behind the Alliance line, as though to meet the GINNs head-on. Firing with one hand, Alpha One's GINN unclipped its sword; engaging full burners on its boosters, the GINN jumped up and slammed down hard on the lead tank, and plunged its sword through; Alpha One-Three sped through, machinegun blazing as it swept its fire in a wide arc in front of it. The ground exploded, but lightning flashed from behind the dust clouds as the Linear Tanks returned fire, their considerable armour protecting them from all but direct hits.

Jumping off as the tank exploded, Alpha One heard a shrill warning alarm; Alpha One-Three fell the next instance, the carcass of the GINN sprawled onto the ground thanks to the tank wave's counterfire. A second siren sounded; another tank was taking aim at Alpha One. With his machinegun occupied on another ground of targets, Alpha One's GINN threw its sword as fast as it could.

The tank fired.

The round narrowly missed smashing the head of the GINN, instead shattering its head fin in a single shot. Static filled Alpha One's comm unit as the GINN attempted to compensate for the sudden drop in capability to receive signals.

The sword impaled the tank, the heavy blade sinking downwards and carving through the centre of the vehicle. All hopes of retrieving his weapon was lost when Alpha One was forced to retreat further away as more tanks took notice of the GINN. He returned fire, but there were simply too many tanks to destroy them all.

"This is Aquila Leader! Requesting reinforcements to Point E-4; we're out of ammunition and additional enemy reinforcement are-" the voice feed ended in static.

"This is ZAFT Ground Operation Command," the operator sounded out again. "Request Trebuchet and Katana squadrons converge at point E-4 to back up Bayonet Squadron. Sabre Squadron, please move to Point R-3 to reinforce Pike Squadron in breaking the line."

"This is bad," Delta Four said, his comms channel filled with static. Alpha One didn't know where he was, but judging by his voice it couldn't be anywhere with a better tactical situation than the one Alpha-One was in right now. "We're being overwhelmed. Slowly… but surely." He pounded on his GINN's dashboard. "Dammit! The Naturals are just throwing bodies at us because they can afford to!"

"Keep your cool," Alpha One said. "I have a plan worth trying. We gather the remainder of Longbow Squadron, head west, circle around and smash their lines, and continue on to break their tank formation at E-4 from the back." Alpha One's GINN help its rifle with both hands. "I need you to inform Spatha Squadron of the plan first. They're located at Point G-1, directly where we need to pass through; their cover fire will be invaluable. Go!"

"Aye sir," Delta Four said, cutting the link.

Even as Alpha One put his GINN to top speed over the land, F-7D Spearhead VTOL fighters zipped through the skies overhead, dropping bombs and firing missiles. Alpha One saw a group of GINNs fire upwards to meet the new airborne threat; a valiant effort, but ultimately too little. Three Spearheads plummeted to the ground, and the rest unleashed a missile hell on the GINNs. Alpha One watched in horror as the group of five GINNs simply vanished in a multitude of explosions that engulfed the mobile suits as a raging blaze would engulf a fireman.

A shrill alert brought Alpha One back to reality; ducking the railgun round that whizzed overhead, he picked up a fallen rifle from the ground, shook the still-attached GINN arm off, and began to spray as much fire as he could in all directions. Activating the boost, Alpha One's GINN took off at high speed towards Spatha Squadron's position, trusting the remainders of Longbow Squadron to catch up, to put into form his one hope at getting out of this deathtrap alive.

A sudden transmission alert warned him of a new threat; an aerial video feed appeared, its ID identifying it as one of the many drones that ZAFT had seeded into the airspace after the drop to provide tactical data, and Alpha-One recognised it as one of the circular structures that he had seen on and around the Supercomplex.

Except that where there had been a circle, it was now occupied by what was unmistakably a gun turret. Alpha One realised with an impending sense of dread that the data indicated it as a large structure, emitting electromagnetic signatures similar to those of a railgun. It fired, and a white flash filled the screen for a millisecond.

A long, drawn-out warning siren sounded out, and Alpha One turned, expecting to see tanks, missile trucks, or even infantry stream out of the forest from his right. What he saw was beyond his wildest dreams and nightmares; the sky was filled with streaks of light, and a few dozen arced straight for his GINN at speeds that no Coordinator could even hope to avoid or block.

Hundreds of self-forging copper pellets, the force of their flight path shaped into a form that best allowed them to penetrate the composite layered armour of the GINN, rained and thundered over the ZAFT mobile suit. The GINN went straight into the mud, going from a working mobile suit to one filled with holes as coolant sprayed, fuel leaked, and the mangled limbs of the mechanical humanoid collapsed under the force of its own momentum. The GINN hit the ground, parts scattering around it.

Alpha One had been lucky, or unlucky, depending on perspective. Three of the pellets had penetrated the cockpit; one had missed his head by mere millimetres, while one had grazed him in the right arm; even then, the impact had pulverised his shoulder, the spray of blood and bone decorating the right cockpit screens.

The third pellet's glancing blow had taken out a chunk of the Coordinator pilot's torso. Amidst the blinding pain and gasping for every breath, Alpha One reached out, with his free hand, for the photo of his family, which was miraculously still intact.

He did not hear Spatha Leader getting shot, his last words on the general channel telling all forces to beware of flanking manoeuvres. He did not hear about the Alliance crushing the ZAFT soldiers at point E-4, and the desperate cries of ZAFT soldiers as they tried to stem a tide they could not hope to stop. He did not hear Longbow Squadron's various members die in ways too horrific to describe, as unidentified long-range attacks continued to pick off entire groups of ZAFT mobile suits without the pilots ever finding out how they died. All he concentrated on was getting to his family's photograph.

He never made it.

Alpha One's GINN exploded, and its armour and parts shattered into thousands of flaming pieces amidst the fires of an explosion. The burning wreck that was left behind did not abate in its flames until the battle ended, when a sudden rain doused the battlefield in grey.

The first Battle of Victoria was a complete loss for ZAFT, and a terrible lesson on how war on Earth would be a totally different game from space dominance.

Three-hundred and fifty mobile suit pilots from ZAFT paid for that lesson with their lives that day. There were no survivors.

_**Afterword:**_

_The Battle of Victoria was ZAFT's first attempt to gain a foothold on Earth, which failed thanks to the Earth Alliance's overwhelming planetside strength, and a lack of the specialized land units ZAFT would deploy later on during the SEED series. _

_Word had it that ZAFT launched the attack to secure food supplies from Earth, although the Alliance had over-exaggerated the need in their report of the incident. Regardless, the failure led to Operation Uroboros, a three-stage plan to set up proper ZAFT bases, cut off the Alliance space forces from the ground forces, and finally saturating the Earth with Neutron Jammers, leading to the infamous April Fool Crisis tragedy. _

_A clip of a ZAFT landing can be seen in the first episode of the series; I've used that as help in writing this chapter._

_EDIT: With Chapter 10, publishing, I've seen it fit to rewrite the chapter to bring it more in line with the story. I'll be rewriting Chapter 10 as well to mesh the two together._


	2. Chapter 2: Sailing the Grimaldi Front

_**Author's Note:**_

_This fanfic is to write upon some of the events in Gundam SEED and SEED Destiny that are not touched upon or mentioned in-series, but their dates are listed on GundamWikia and are thus treated as part of canon. They are therefore based upon actual happenings in the Cosmic Era universe, but the events within them are open to interpretation. This fanfic is also an attempt at showcasing a "what-if" of all sides involved in the wars, and how some of the events within the show might have come to be._

**Gundam SEED: Tales of the Cosmic Era**

**Chapter 2: Sailing the Grimadi Front **

**CE 70 May 21****st****, **_**Nazca**_**-class **_**Nox Avis,**_** 200km from the Grimaldi Crater, Luna**

**13 45 Standard Hours**

Captain Miar Reiden set her cap back on her head as she watched her crew at work. Her ship, the _Nazca_-class capital destroyer _Nox Avis_, serial number ZSFC-L2-P416, the newest, and the fourth hundred and sixteenth ship of the second production line, crept along the shadows casted by the Grimaldi Crater. The crater was located near the equator of the moon, but the time was such that for the next hour or two at least, the Grimaldi Crater, where ZAFT and Alliance fleets have been fighting for two weeks on end, would be shrouded in light from the sun.

The only place for the _Nox Avis_ to hide was the outer edge of the crater that was located at the ZAFT border of the Grimadi Front, in the shadows casted by the edge of the crater that was blocking off the light. The _Nox Avis_ crept along quietly, firing its chemical thrusters every now and then to avoid going into the sunlight, or scraping its hull against the lunar surface. A blue flare of light every now and then would be the only telltale sign of the _Nox Avis_, a ship of the ZAFT 6th Fleet.

Miar turned to her radar officer. "Found them yet? It's been almost four hours since the last battle. If those downed pilots were compromised in any way, all we'll be bringing back are a few cold corpses." She tightened her grip on the captain's chair. "Lord knows we have no time for that." She turned to the officer manning the communications console. "How about the Falke Team?"

"Falke Leader says negative," the comms officer, Andy Alyson replied.

Earlier, a ZAFT patrol, the _Laurasia_-class frigate _Starforce Valor_, had run into an Alliance fleet trying to make an incursion into the ZAFT side of the crater. Contact was lost with the ship and its MS complement, and so the _Nox Avis_ was sent to find the missing warship and its crew. Soon after arriving on the scene, the _Nox Avis_ had picked up a faint SOS signal; however, the _Nazca_-class destroyer had moved into the Alliance side of the Grimadi Crater during the search, and had run into a pair of Alliance warships. With its MS team out searching another part of the crater, the _Nox Avis_ did its best to lose both of them, forcing the ZAFT warship into a game of stealth.

"Nothing on-screen either", the radar officer, Nana Sette replied. "Nelson-class contacts B103 and B104 have disappeared from radar range since two hours ago."

"Continue wide-area sweep," Miar ordered.

The radar officer was about to reply when something on the screen caught her eye, and her back involuntarily stiffened. "New contact from the front at one-one-one. Ultra-heavy tonnage."

Miar sat straighter. "Identify it." _Ultra-heavy tonnage? I thought that classification was a hypothetical level only…_

"Getting a clearer read," Nana continued, turning back to her console. "Contact has separated into seven IDs; the system is running a clearer check now. One _Agamemnon_, two _Nelsons_, and four _Drakes_, bearing one-one-five from our current position at a 40-degree incline from ship axis." She hurriedly turned back to her controls. "Mobile Armor launch confirmed. They're going straight towards where the Falke Team is."

Miar weighed her choices. Mobile Suits would have no trouble outrunning the ships, but the mobile armours could chase, and it would be a minimum of forty mobile armours against three mobile suits. While mobile suits were powerful, they were not invincible, and Miar had seen enough battles and skirmishes until today to testify to that.

"Lansley," Miar said to her main navigator, "bring the ship up to full power. Disengage safeties; dump-heat the engines and prepare for full burn." Turning to her weapons officer, she issued her second set of orders. "Katner, arm the beam cannons and get the CIWS system online. Prepare a fire order."

Two replies came simultaneously from Keith Lansley, the navigator, and Yuria Katner, the weapons officer. "Yes ma'am."

"Lead ship has taken notice of us," Nana said. "Two _Drake_-classes breaking off to engage us, bearing one-one-six from our current position, 45-degree incline." She keyed in several commands in quick succession. "_Drake_-class D111 is accelerating; _Drake_-class D112 is keeping its distance."

"Fire order ready. Synching with shipboard weapons," Yuria said, her steady fingers over the controls. "CIWS network online."

"Reading missile locks from D111, ma'am." Nana said.

Alarms blared as the lead _Drake_-class emptied its torpedo tubes and missile pods at the _Nox Avis_. "Missiles and torpedoes incoming, the sensors are tracking thirty-six contacts." Nana continued. "Entering range of our absolute defence zone in 3… 2… 1…"

Explosions dotted the space in-between as the CIWS units on the _Nox Avis_ opened fire. The guns spat out 58mm rounds at eighty rounds per second, the tracers flashing a path through space to destroy the missiles and guided torpedoes threatening the ship.

"Missiles and torpedoes all destroyed," Yuria said. "Fire order realigning… done." She turned to look at Miar. "Beam cannons are running hot, captain"

"Target lead ship. Fire." Miar said.

"Yes ma'am, firing," Yuria turned back to her console, and tapped a single button.

A low rumble filled the ship as its beam cannons' focusing racks gathered and concentrated the superheated plasma energy, before firing twin lances of brilliant green that leapt out towards the lead _Drake_-class vessel. Flashes appeared across the _Nox Avis_' frame as tiny chemical thrusters fired to counteract the recoil of the beam cannons. The _Drake_-class tried to turn and roll, thrusters firing, but it did not make it in time, and the _Nox Avis_' shots boiled through its thin armour.

Miar watched for a moment as the _Drake_-class' inertia caused it to drift to starboard even as the beam cannons continued their fire, the beams cutting through the side of the ship. The _Nox Avis_' frontal view screen polarized automatically as the _Drake_-class exploded, filling the screen with harsh light.

"D111 destroyed. D112 still incoming," Nana said. "Two _Nelson_-class warships have broken off from the main fleet and are en route to our position. Both N001 and N002 are bearing one-two-one at an incline of thirty degrees from ship axis."

"Message from Falke Leader," Andy said. "He says that his team has located the _Starforce Valor_. The ship is destroyed, but they've managed to retrieve two ZAFT pilots and the wreckage of a Moebius Zero unit from the general area."

Miar turned to face the communications officer in surprise. "He _what _a Moebius Zero unit?!"

"He retrieved it, ma'am, along with two surviving ZAFT pilots," Andy said. "Should I have his team drop the wreckage?"

"No, definitely not," Miar said, turning to face Nana. _That certainly solves the mystery of the high numbers of Alliance troops in the area… for now, at least._ "Alyson, send a message requesting for reinforcements to the Lorenz Base. Sette, give me the number of mobile armours pursuing Falke Team."

"Yes ma'am, message sent," Andy said.

"Twenty-three… no, twenty-two." Nana peered at the radar screen. "Falke Three is covering Falke Two and Falke Leader as they approach. More mobile armours are joining in."

"A reply from Lorenz HQ. Reinforcements en route in fifteen minutes, Captain," Andy replied.

"Lansley, increase speed to maximum," Miar said, facing the screen. "We're going to flyby pickup of the Falke Team; synchronize our route with theirs." _With these numbers it would be suicide to fight it out with them._ "Alyson, notify Falke Leader."

"Roger," Keith said. "Engine output maximum… speed increasing." _Nox Avis_ rumbled as its engines increased to maximum power, and the ship leapt forward, scattering lunar dust behind its wake. _Nazca_-class destroyers were well-armed with superior mobility to their _Nelson_-class counterparts and speed on par with _Drake_-class vessels, and the _Nox Avis_ was no exception to that rule.

"Falke Team has suffered a casualty!" Alyson said, a slight tone of worry in his voice. "Falke Three is out of commission and has lost control of his unit. Falke Two still has the Moebius wreckage and Falke Leader still has the two survivors."

Miar bit her lower lip as _Nox Avis_ continued to speed towards the Falke Team, the ship speeding over the uneven moonscape as fast as it could; not too high, so as to avoid being fully exposed to the Alliance fleet, and not too low, to avoid hitting the surface before they could evade any obstacles. "Show me Falke Three's projected path."

"Falke Three will drift off-course roughly 40 degrees from our projected path," Andy said, bringing up the data from Keith's station. "Falke Leader has told us to continue on our current trajectory; he will re-launch later to pick up Falke Three."

"Missiles!" Nana said. "Approaching from vector six-two-eight from D112." She continued scanning the radar screen. "Incoming vessels splitting up; N001 is approaching us from a level vector of nine-one-six; N002 is approaching from vector two-six-seven."

_Catching us in the middle from three ways…_ Miar thought. "Lansley, cut engines, but keep the capacitators hot. Katner, arm beams cannons again. A half-charge will do."

"Aye ma'am," Yuria said. "Beam cannons charging."

"Engines down, ma'am," Keith said. "Closing valves. Capacitators at thirty percent and charging at five percent per second."

"Falke Team inbound from vector zero-zero-zero at zero incline from ship axis," Andy said. "Hangar crews have emergency landing equipment ready." From the front screen, Miar saw a green and orange blur speed into the middle of the ship.

A pause, then Miar heard Andy's voice again. "Falke Two is in, crash cage operation successful. Falke Leader is decelerating now."

Miar turned to Keith. "Lansley, stabilize the ship, and give me the readings for the capacitators."

"Capacitators at one-hundred-ten percent." Keith replied, keying in controls. "Engines are still at full operation value."

"CIWS network is functioning normally," Yuria said, keying in controls. "Additional missile locks and beam charging signatures detected from the two _Nelson_-class targets. Mobile armours closing in; ETA to absolute defence zone in fifty seconds."

Miar looked as twin specks of green light appeared in the distance. Moments later twin beams lanced out, barely missing the _Nox Avis_. "Alyson! Is Commander Falke ready yet?"

"Falke Leader has just landed," Andy replied.

"He's going to have to perform an unassisted launch," Miar told Andy. To Yuria, she said "Ignore the _Nelson_-class; target the swarm of mobile armours chasing after the Falke Team and fire the beam cannons. Arm VLS system with anti-beam chaff missiles and launch them as soon as it's ready. Lansley," Miar said. "Prepare for full burn."

"Aye ma'am, firing main guns, missiles armed," Yuria said, as twin spears of light shot out. In the distance, Miar could see explosions and flickers of light as the approaching Moebius mobile armours scrambled to dodge the beam shots; some didn't make it. Regardless, the path in front cleared. Miar saw from the corner of her eye a CGUE speeding out of the _Nox Avis_' hangar.

"Torpedo tracking signals from the Nelson-class warships!" Nana said.

"Ignore them. Full burn. They won't be able to get their torpedoes to launch in time."

"Yes ma'am," Keith said. "Engines at full burn."

The _Nox Avis_ rumbled as its engines went into high gear; the warships shot forward almost instantaneously, rapidly closing the distance between the two _Nelson_-class warships and the mobile armours. Chaff missiles streamed out of the _Nox Avis_' VLS ports, rapidly dispersing their beam-diffusing particles everywhere in short order. Ignoring the beam shots from the Nelson-class warships, which rapidly dissipated in the anti-beam particle cloud, she turned to Andy. "Has Falke Leader found his missing man yet?"

Andy shook his head. "No information… wait… new transmission from Commander Falke. He's found Falke Three and retrieved his unit." He turned to face Miar, and the captain could see the hope in the younger officer's eyes. "ETA nine minutes… but he won't have enough fuel to stop in our flight vector."

"Get Falke Two out there and catch him," Miar said. "We'll do the same flyby catch again once that's done. Tell the hangar crew to do whatever they can to prepare for it."

"Aye ma'am," Andy said, turning back to his controls.

The _Nox Avis_, still on full burn with its engines, passed by the two warships and the swarm of mobile armours that just caught up with them. Damage alarms sounded out as the _Nazca_-class smashed whatever mobile armour was unlucky enough to get in the way, scarring the ship's hull with small dents and other minor damage; the CIWS turrets of the _Nox Avis_ spat fuse-timed armour-penetrating shells as they tracked the mobile armours, claiming a score of victims in the time it took for the ZAFT warship to pass them. A louder rumble caused Miar to turn to her right; the _Nelson_-class warship that had approached from the front was dangerously close to her ship, close enough that she could actually see the figures on the bridge of the ship they just scraped past. The screen polarized again to filter out bright flashes of light as one of N001's CIWS turrets tracked the _Nox Avis _while firing, its bullets sparking and bouncing harmlessly off the _Nazca_-class' hull armour. "Damage to starboard prong from scraping impact," Andy replied. "Minor hull breach. No crewmembers in danger."

"Ignore it," Miar said. To Keith, she gave new orders. "Cut main engine power and slow the ship down to one-quarter speed. Turn it one-hundred eighty degrees."

"Aye ma'am," Keith said. He keyed in a few commands and turned the steering control. "Ship turning."

Plumes of flame lighted up on the side of the _Nazca_-class as the warship rotated horizontally to face its rear.

"Katner, arm railguns and beam cannons. Prioritize the railguns' charging. Tell the crew to load anti-ship missiles into the VLS."

"Yes ma'am," Katner replied, her voice and tone both calm. "Railguns charging… beam cannons charging… VLS armed."

"Captain," Nana said, a sense of urgency in her voice. "The remaining Alliance ships are changing vectors. Two _Agamemnon_-class carriers and the remaining two _Drake_-class vessels are approaching us from vector three-one-six, incline zero. I'm reading beam weaponry charging signals from them. The other _Drake_-class, D112, is approaching as well."

"Falke Two away," Andy said, as a GINN launched from the _Nox Avis_' launch catapult and turned to the side, speeding off. "ETA to Falke Leader's path in thirty-five seconds."

Miar gritted her teeth as she watched the warship and mobile armour contacts creep closer on the radar display. _So they finally figured out where the main prize is._ "Katner," she said. "Target N001 with railguns and missiles. Sink it."

"Yes ma'am," Katner said. "Firing."

Miar watched as smoke trails etched their way to the _Nelson_-class warship that they had just passed, and the _Nox Avis_ shuddered as the ship aimed and fired its railguns. The _Nox Avis_ listed to one side as the thrusters tried to counteract the recoil of the guns.

"Contact," Andy said. "Falke Three is returning with Falke Two and Falke Leader now."

The targeted _Nelson_-class performed an emergency atmosphere vent from its port side, the ship's docking port opening up and misty air billowing from its side, while its port thrusters fired. The twin railgun shots missed their target as N001 lurched to starboard, and the missiles were forced to change direction abruptly to compensate. N001's CIWS guns fired, and tracers slashed through space as explosion after explosion appeared beside the heavy warship. A few missiles impacted, but the _Nelson_-class was a battleship, and its armour in ship-to-ship combat was formidable. Even beam weapons were not a guaranteed one-hit-kill unless they hit dead-on, and Miar did not have the luxury to wait around while her ship's most powerful weapon charged up to maximum.

"The group of Moebius mobile armours are approaching, ETA thirty seconds. They've joined with reinforcements; I'm reading thirty-six incoming contacts." Nana said. "N001 is firing its beam turrets, but the anti-beam field is currently holding."

"Charge railguns again, but load VLS with anti-air missiles. Ignore the mobile armours; let them come into the absolute defence zone. Prioritize charging the railguns; use the capacitators if you have to. The beam cannons will take too long for a proper shot." Miar said. _That ship has one hell of an aggressive captain…_

"Falke Three ETA for return in five… four… three… two… one." Andy sat back into his seat, wiping sweat from his brow. "Falke Three and Falke Leader onboard."

"Railguns charged. Firing. Missile loading is ninety percent complete." The _Nox Avis _shuddered as its railguns fired again, this time striking N001; the _Nelson_-class battleship reeled as the impact from the railgun round on the front of its starboard caused it to turn its port. Thrusters fired desperately to turn the ship back on course, and the beam turrets turned to track the _Nox Avis_, keeping up an unending stream of fire that continued to chip away at the anti-beam particle cloud.

Yuria turned to look at Miar. "Anti-beam particles are down to twenty percent."

Miar sat back into her chair. "Our objective is done here. Lansley, turn the _Nox Avis_ around and execute a full burn."

Keith started to type on his console. "Aye ma'am. With less power from the capacitators it'll take-"

A sudden blast rocked the ship. Miar gripped hard on the armrests of the captain's chair as the vibrations slowly ceased, looking up in time to see the shredded remains of a Moebius mobile armour drift past the bridge. CIWS rounds continued chasing after the drifting wreckage, and the mobile armour exploded. "Alyson, damage report!"

"Port main engine has suffered critical damage from Moebius linear cannon round!" Andy shouted. He pressed his headset closer to his ear. "Engine crews report that we're losing coolant and fuel through a hull breach!"

"More mobile armours catching up," Yuria said. "Changing CIWS sweep pattern to prevent them from entering the defence zone's red range."

"Captain!" Nana said. "The _Agamemnon_-class carriers have begun to fire at us!"

"Shut the section, Alyson." Miar said to Andy. "And flush the materials in the damaged tanks into the auxiliary tanks!" Turning to Keith, she said "Give us as much power as possible. Take the _Nox Avis_ away from here."

"Missiles, from the _Drake_-class!" Nana said, scanning her screen frantically. "D113 has caught up and added its payload to that from N111 and N112! Total of ninety-six missile contacts!"

Miar picked up her captain's cap from where it fell, before seating back into the captain's seat. A separate window on the display screen showed the torpedoes and missiles tracing white paths through space towards the _Nox Avis_. To Yuria, she said "Empty the VLS missiles at the Moebius swarm. Load the next batch with anti-beam chaff missiles. Change CIWS attack pattern to prioritize missiles instead."

Missiles streamed out one after another from the _Nox Avis _as the Moebius mobile armours ducked and weaved to avoid the tracking missiles_._ Explosions begun to appear across space as the missiles found their mark, and the remaining mobile armours pulled away from the warship to regroup. The CIWS on the _Nox Avis_ sprayed as much fire as they could at the approaching missiles, and dozens of explosions obscured the _Nazca_-class' back view.

The ship rocked again as a torpedo burst out of the explosion cloud and smashed into the damaged portside engine, its blast blowing the _Nox Avis_ off-course. As other smaller missiles struck the ship's surface, the _Nox Avis_ tumbled, smashed against the lunar surface and bounced off, smoke billowing from the mangled remains of her port engine. Anti-beam chaff particles billowed out of its breached portside VLS as the damaged missiles continued to leak their payload; the _Nelson_-class and _Agamemnon_-class fired their main cannons, but the beams splashed harmlessly against the rapidly thickening cloud of anti-beam particles.

"Portside hull breach along the main body." Andy said. "We lost the starboard beam cannon from that impact with the lunar surface!"

"Doesn't matter," Miar said, blowing hair out of her face. "Katner! Empty the portside VLS of their chaff missiles as well. Keith! Can you get any more speed out of the starboard engine? Anything is fine as long as it takes us out of range!" _Good thing the anti-air missiles weren't in the VLS this time._

A low groan echoed from the superstructure of the _Nox Avis _as the wounded ship accelerated again. The _Nazca_-class destroyer slowly righted itself and begun to move away; even when damaged, the ship lived up well to its reputation.

Unfortunately, the _Nox Avis_ was no longer as fast as it was supposed to be; the _Nelson_-class warships accelerated as well, followed by the rest of the fleet, and slowly but surely the distance between the ZAFT destroyer and the Alliance warships closed.

"Missile locks from all three _Drake_-class ships," Nana said, fatigue lining the edge of her voice.

_Can we really not outrun them?_ Miar thought.

"New contacts," Nana sat up a bit straighter. "They're ZAFT warships. Two _Nazca_-classes and three _Laurasia_-class ships! "

Miar leaned back into her seat and breathed out as the ZAFT reinforcements rapidly closed the distance and took up position around her vessel, firing at the Alliance fleet that dared to chase her so far into the side of the moon owned by ZAFT. "Transmission from the _Galvani_, ma'am," Andy said. "Putting her through."

"This is Captain Rau le Creuset of the _Galvani_. Is the _Nox Avis_ still operational?"

"You arrived in the nick of time, Captain," Miar managed a thin smile. "They're relentless."

"I can imagine. With the _Nox Avis_ having one of their precious Moebius Zero mobile armours onboard, they were very afraid of losing the only trump card that remains uniquely theirs. Unfortunately for them, their nightmare has become reality." Rau replied. Turning to the Commander seated beside him, he gave him a light tap on the shoulder. "It's your role now, Ades. I'm going out."

"Yes sir!" Fredrick Ades said.

Miar continued watching the battle as the ZAFT reinforcements and their mobile suits ran the Alliance fleet ragged. As the last _Agamemnon_-class carrier took a lethal hit to its midsection and hit the lunar surface, unable to take to space ever again, she took off her captain's hat and walked up to the front of the bridge. "Good job, everyone. We pulled through today as well." Miar Reiden looked at the direction of the Lorenz crater. "Let's go back home."

**Afterword:**

_The Grimaldi Front was a term to describe the battle lines drawn on the lunar surface, with the Grimaldi crater the middle ground in between ZAFT and OMNI forces on this side of the moon. The battle lasted for about a month and is infamous amongst the Alliance for the first successful deployment of the Cyclops System, and the resulting Pyrrhic victory for both sides. _

_The Cyclops System would later be seen in the SEED series during the JOSH-A battle and when Kira Yamato reappears in the Freedom._

_The Grimaldi Front is also the place where the Alliance's 3__rd__ Fleet and their Moebius Zero mobile armour corps made their last stand, with Mu la Flaga being the sole survivor. His feats are mentioned briefly in the series, of which one of them includes shooting down 5 GINNs in the Endymion Crater, earning him his name of the "Hawk of Endymion". _

_Rau le Cruset also had comparable achievements even though they remain unknown, as he was later put in command of the Vesalius for them._

_In this, I've wrote that both Rau and his trusted Commander, Ades, were already on the Galvani, Rau's previous command, and that both would transfer over to the Vesalius. _


	3. Chapter 3: Oceanic Impulses

_**Author's Note:**_

_This fanfic is to write upon some of the events in Gundam SEED and SEED Destiny that are not touched upon or mentioned in-series, but their dates are listed on GundamWikia and are thus treated as part of canon. They are therefore based upon actual happenings in the Cosmic Era universe, but the events within them are open to interpretation. This fanfic is also an attempt at showcasing a "what-if" of all sides involved in the wars, and how some of the events within the show might have come to be._

**Gundam SEED: Tales of the Cosmic Era**

**Chapter 3: Oceanic Impulses**

Living near the sea was an interesting experience for Fredric Koherng; he loved the sea for its appearance and its many moods. The Coordinator was born on CE 47 in the Kingdom of Scandinavia, in a town off the shores of its Norway region, and he grew up watching the various faces of the sea.

Although the child of a more well-off family specializing in a small business of mechanical repair, as well as the debugging and maintenance of the modest navigation systems of the town's fishing fleet (thus explaining their affording the funds for Fredric's Coordinator genes), Fredric's father was no stricter or controlling of his child than any other average parent, and allowed Fredric to run free around town as any other boy or girl would.

Thus, the young Fredric had grown up watching the local workers in the fisheries, and the fishermen who ventured further into the seas to catch rarer prizes. In fact, on particularly busy seasons Fredric's father would join up as a seaman to assist the fishermen; that, and it would be absurd to sit back while the navigation computers and other mechanical systems he were responsible for were put to the test in the rough waters off Norway. More than once he had taken Fredric out with him, and the boy had learnt how to tie sailor knots better than he learned his English and sciences.

To Fredric's immense disappointment, the town he grew up in was not immune to the Coordinator hate that bloomed during CE 55 when he was eight; it wasn't much later that he understood the rumours that abound of Coordinators having a hand in engineering one of history's most virulent influenza viruses. Regardless, after the town directly experienced a car bomb in its local school, and the criminal responsible discovered to have a link to a locally-trained branch of Blue Cosmos working in the Kingdom of Scandinavia, Fredric's father sent him to the PLANTs, for his safety from dissidents, and to keep the local townsfolk safe from his presence.

Fredric remembered mostly spending his first two months in the PLANTs' boarding school either being near tears or else outright crying. To be separated from the sea was his greatest sorrow, and while the PLANTs' environment tried to replicate it, Fredric could never see the aquatic regions of December City's colonies, with its azure and pristine waters, soft caressing winds and small controlled waves as nothing more that glorified swimming pools, and the creatures in it pond-bred specimens. It did not help that his classmates laughed at him as he tried to explain his love of the Earth's vast oceans; to them, the oceans and all of its sharp, terrible storms and rich valuable resources were some absurd notion of comparable stupidity to thinking that the Earth was flat.

Adding to that was the vast genetic divide; after the car bomb incident and before he left town, some of Fredric's friends had begun to avoid him, including the girl he always looked up to; he had left the town alone and only his family came to send him off. In the PLANTs, the Coordinators he talked to either made polite gestures to move away from him or outright ridiculed him when he started taking about his earlier days on Earth. He made very few friends as he progressed up the Coordinator educational ladder, and as icing on the cake, he realized that he was secretly pleased that he no longer had to feel guilty about getting the best marks in class, or run further than anyone else. He realized that English and the sciences, his two worst subjects, were easy when he was pushed to learn instead of being allowed to run free, and the conflicting emotions got bad enough that he actually tried to slit his own throat at one point, only being stopped by four people holding him down, and which resulted in him being sent for a year-long counselling session.

The only good thing that came out of it was his widened understanding of mechanical workings; he even participated in a project to build an ingenious worker exoskeleton, and won third place in Maius City's academicals school rankings for it. Unfortunately, that did not stop the campus bullies from calling him "that Natural-loving faggot".

Despite all the knowledge that the PLANTs imbued him with, he longed to return to Norway as soon as he could. However, his effort in securing respect through academic power backfired somewhat; he did not earn universal respect, and the people who did respect him wanted his talents for their work. It took a personal visit from his father in CE 66 to convince him to stay. When he finally got leave to visit his parents, it was the fourth of April, CE 70; three days after the April Fool's Crisis.

The town he lived in was no less dependent on state-supplied nuclear power than any other Earth city; other sources of energy could only supplement nuclear power rather than replace it, even in a balanced nation like the Kingdom of Scandinavia. Synthetic fuel had only been recently created, and spaceship-grade thruster fuel as a desperate, last-minute option was out of the reach of anyone not directly involved in the space industry.

For a neutral nation, the Kingdom of Scandinavia had substantial energy reserves and alternative inputs from wind, water, and even solar energy, but its dependence on nuclear power was still substantial and all of it went towards important institutions; the vast greenhouse complexes to the north where important crops were grown, or the city hospitals, where the seriously ill required equipment running all day for years to keep them from dying. It took the government all they could to keep the city from falling apart like others across the globe.

Fringe towns were definitely not "important institutions".

When Fredric finally drove back home, after a week of searching for still-working transport, what greeted him was a town of cold streets, dead appliances, ice, frozen human statues and sixty live people from its original population of one thousand five hundred. He spent one day in silent mourning and two weeks helping the sixty survivors bury any dead they could reach. When Kingdom relief efforts finally arrived, he bid the seas farewell and slipped away quietly. With his family, friends and his former first love six feet under, there was nothing chaining his soul to Earth anymore.

Soon after returning to the PLANTs, he signed up as a mobile suit pilot. He had lived in the colonies long enough that he felt that it could be his second home; the destruction of Junius Seven had angered him as it did to all Coordinators, and he felt sufficient hatred to drown out his disgust at ZAFT's vulgar and wanton deployment of their Neutron Jammers. Although it sickened himself, his way of thinking managed to render himself oblivious to the emotion of sorrow eating away at his insides if he didn't focus on thinking about it.

**CE 70 May 25****th****, Offshore Casablanca, Morocco, North Africa**

**Morning 08 56 **

A beeping sound shook Fredric from his reverie, and he ran a quick systems check on his GINN WASP; being near the sea tended to make him think back to his younger days. He watched as lines of code scrolled through the screen; the unit was one of a dwindling group of converted GINN units for multirole assault and shallow-water warfare. Following the successful operation at Carpentaria, Australia, ZAFT had come to rely on specialized units more and more.

The operation that Fredric was in right now was to partially secure a place where ZAFT forces could deploy into the African region with their new and yet-untested ground-warfare units. Fredric watched as a GOOnH unit swam past his GINN WASP, the transformable submersible/mobile suit cutting through the water; looking further, one could see that GOOhN squadrons were arranged in neat formations, the arrowhead-shaped units cruising through the calm waters, faint light patterns washing over their hulls.

The GINN WASP was a shallow-water marine unit and sacrificed pure underwater operation capability for its sea/land multirole classification; for Fredric, a ZAFT orbital drop trooper well-versed in storming tactics, multirole was everything to him. He was the soldier who could do everything, and he expected to be called upon to fulfil whatever role ZAFT needed him to in order to ensure the operation was a success.

Despite the power of a full ZAFT _Vosgulov_-class submarine fleet backing them up and the deployment of dozens of mobile suits, Fredric felt anything but secure. Having DINNs in the air did not make the sea forces immune to sub-hunting munitions if they were already dropped before their parent aircraft was shot down; with the fleet this close to OMNI Global Command at Geneva, ZAFT's ambitious plan of establishing a base at the Gibraltar area was seen by many to be a possible repeat of the First Battle of Victoria.

"This is the ZAFT flagship _Blue Steel_," a voice sounded out over the intercom channels. "All units and squadrons move to your assigned position to prepare for the assault on the OMNI 3rd Naval Fleet." The _Vosgulov_ submarine that acted as general field command was located a distance away from them, but the other submarines were long gone and in whatever position they needed to be.

Fredric manoeuvred the GINN WASP to position, with two other units joining him. He opened the comm channel and connected both pilots of the other units to him. "Kouda, Baresha, status report."

"All green," came the replies. Fredric's squad, which was assigned to him after Carpentaria during a reshuffle of forces in that area, was comprised of GINN WASPs and was one of four squadrons; it was in case Morocco had a larger-than-expected welcome party, and also because there weren't enough GOOhNs to go around. Fredric preferred the GINN WASP either way; being built off the GINN chassis meant that it worked better on land then in water, and Fredric wanted it that way in case they had to storm the beachfront off Morocco and raze its OMNI port to the ground. Ships of the ZAFT Space Fleet Command's Third Fleet, up in space orbit, was also in this operation as support; if needed, they would be dropping weapons packages down to the battlefield.

This was their last operation in a naval position. Fredric, Baresha and Kouda had been together as a squad since their early days during the Bloody Valentine War, and Kouda had expressed disdain at ZAFT's Orbital Troopers having to fill in for land forces until ZAFT Space Command could bring in more reinforcements. With this battle, ZAFT could finally establish a drop point at the Gibraltar Spaceport, a large complex of considerable importance, to bring in more combat strength for the conquest of OMNI-controlled Africa, and by extension the Victoria Supercomplex, the site of ZAFT's first terrestrial failure.

Another reason for their advance into Africa was that the governing body of North Africa, the African Community, had pledged allegiance to ZAFT. Initially aligned with the Eurasian Federation, the leaders of the African Community had decided on a bold move to establish a proper alliance with ZAFT; with the Eurasian Federation moving into the African Community by force, ZAFT had no choice but to establish their presence there.

"This is ZAFT Operation Command to all units; the OMNI fleet will enter the combat zone in one minute. All combat squadrons take position; first GOOhN wave, begin advance on the lead squad's signal."

The GOOhNs arranged themselves into a loose arrowhead formation of three waves. The first wave advanced, and within seconds the GOOhNs met OMNI's first defence line. The first line was comprised of _Fraser_-class destroyers; while it was the only ship type in OMNI that had direct anti-sub capabilities without relying on carrier-based helicopters or bomb-armed F-7D Spearheads, they were designed to hunt large submarines like ZAFT's _Vosgulov_-class, rather than the small and nimble GOOhNs. Apart from the submarines that surfaced just to launch DINN aerial mobile suits, the rest of the ZAFT fleet was safely hidden deep underwater and approaching from another direction; by the time the OMNI fleet could detect the _Vosgulov_ submarines, their only naval means of anti-submarine warfare would have long been sunk by ZAFT mobile suits.

"Second and third GOOhN squadrons, move up and destroy the remaining _Fraser_-class vessels from the first and second approach vectors." the operator said. "GINN WASP squadrons A through D are to assault the remaining ships from the third vector; once complete all naval forces will commence attack on enemy main fleet. All DINN squadrons link up your data feeds to DINN SEIT R-133T and place priority over destroying anti-submarine aerial assets."

As Fredric kicked the aquatic engines of his GINN WASP into high gear, he could see that OMNI wasted no opening moves, as a particularly large cluster of detonation signals wiped five GOOhNs off the sonar map. Another overload of sonar signals from the left of his squad indicated a _Fraser_-class getting holed through and through. Fredric saw a squad of GOOhNs speed away from the vessel and approach a second frigate; the GOOhNs' phonon maser beam weapons meant that the _Fraser_-class' thin hulls were no match for anti-armour weaponry. The second ship sunk in short order as well as the five GOOhNs darted around the ship, avoiding the occasional depth charge and continually punching holes into its hull.

Fredric and his squad approached another intact _Fraser_-class well away from the heat of battle. Judging by the fresh wreckage of two GOOhNs sinking into the depths, it seemed that its Kingfisher naval helicopters had been doing well in predicting the paths of the attacking GOOhNs.

Fredric steered his unit hard to the right as a canister sunk into the water; a split second later it detonated, fuzzing up his display. Even with a cushioned cockpit layer and underneath his pilot suit, Fredric felt that depth charge all the way to his bones. "Kouda, Baresha! We're going to sink the destroyer in one run. We'll spilt their attention and get their aerial forces to start panicking!"

"Aye sir," Kouda replied. "Getting into position!"

"Baresha here," the man replied. "Ready."

"Let's rock their boat," Fredric said. "Advance!"

Fredric felt his machine rumble as its underwater jets went to full power. The GINN WASP was not particularly hydrodynamic, but it managed just fine with a decent top speed and surprising manoeuvrability even in water, allowing them to easily weave their way through the rain of depth charges.

While a GOOhN was better armoured and more agile in water, they couldn't keep their position underneath the hull of a ship as easily as a WASP could; the GINN WASP's leg turbines and main engine's construction allowed it to stay suspended in the water far more effortlessly, the way a GINN could keep position in space better than a Moebius. That made the GOOhNs easier pickings for Kingfisher helicopters with an experienced crew prowling above, since they could not stay under a ship for long during an attack run.

That was not a problem for the GINN WASPs however. Setting his unit's weapon in position, Fredric started sending phonon maser blast after phonon maser blast into the Fraser-class' hull. Around him, his teammates did the same; Kouda with a rocket dart launcher, and Baresha with a torpedo launcher from underneath the ship, all three of them shielded from the Kingfishers' depth charges.

Fredric withdrew as his mobile suit's computers noted a sudden build-up of heat inside the ship. "Our job's done," he said, as his GINN WAPS pushed away from the ship's hull. From the other side, Kouda's unit did the same, and Baresha's unit joined them as all three WASPs sped away from the dying frigate.

"A perfect job as always," Baresha said. "Manoeuvre Sixteen always works."

Fredric kept silent as he searched his tactical map for their next target, but he agreed with Baresha. Manoeuvre Sixteen was an offshoot squad-based movement of Manoeuvre Twelve that ZAFT MS squadrons used for blitzkrieg anti-ship operations; instead of risking life and limb to rush past a spaceship's mobile armour screen and place precise shots on a warship's key targeted points, Manoeuvre Sixteen required the squadron to stay close and pound their target lifeless.

Manoeuvre Sixteen was informally known as "Cheesemaker", and was a manoeuvre more popular with space-bound and aquatic pilots, since their three-dimensional battlefield allowed them to hide behind their target's blind spots. Manoeuvre Twelve was a favourite of land pilots, considering that battles tended to be fast and pilots fought on a level surface with cover depending on location, and rather aptly nicknamed the "Jet Stream Attack".

Of course, there wasn't a rule stating that either could only be used in specific areas, and most ZAFT pilots depended on the situation in order to decide on their attack patterns.

"Second unit," Fredric said, as the squad sped towards their second target. On his linked radar to ZAFT's DINN SEIT, he could see that aerial forces were starting to converge on the WASPs last known position.

A sudden roar of static forced Fredric to reboot off his unit's acoustic sensor, the devices having overloaded from the sudden burst of feedback. "Dammit!" Fredric said. "Did they start launching acoustic torpedoes?"

"Confirmed multiple acoustic torpedo launch from fleet formation," Baresha said. "Earliest detonation in thirty seconds."

"Tune your acoustic sensors to the lowest setting if you haven't done so," Fredric said. A close detonation could destroy their equipment, and it was not a sense he wanted to lose in the middle of underwater combat. A GINN WASP could only dive up to a hundred meters; it would not be enough to evade depth charges without using acoustic sensors, even if they were at the minimum setting. "We'll just have to bull our way through with motion sensors."

There was a substantial pause from both Kouda and Baresha before they adjusted their sensors. Fredric couldn't blame them; the GINN WASPs' acoustic sensors were a good addition to their detection methods; it allowed the onboard combat computer to "hear" the sound of a depth charge being dropped from above the waves, or the dull roar of a torpedo, and the computer could display that information as a position on incoming danger; coupled together with the GINN WASP's full sensor suite and they could practically weave through a net of depth charges, as long as they didn't get too close to the surface. With the acoustic sensors on minimum, their range and sensor map was severely reduced.

The action worked, however. The next blast from the acoustic torpedoes left nothing more than a light rumbling throughout the GINN WASPs' frames. Fredric brought up Kouda on the intercom. "How many of them are launching acoustic torpedoes?"

"Counting our target, about five ships," Kouda replied. "The _Fraser_-class ships are all but sunk, but we're going slower than expected. The submarines will be approaching from this vector in about one minute's time."

"Haven't they secured air supremacy yet?" Fredric asked.

"Not yet, sir," Kouda replied. "The DINNs are putting up a good advance, but they have to deal with five carriers' worth of aircraft, as well as anti-air fire from the Fraser-class frigates, as well as _Des_ _Monies_-class and _Arkansas_-class cruisers."

"Then the sooner we sink them, the better," Fredric said. "Get ready for the next ship."

"Aye sir," both his teammates replied. The WASPs lined up again and sped towards the _Fraser_-class vessel, and Fredric readied his weapon. The first phonon maser shot did nothing more that rattle the ship's hull, but within seconds Fredric's squad was close enough that the phonon maser started ripping holes through armour. The three WASPs spilt as depth charges begun to rain down on them; while they could not dodge as effectively without the acoustic sensors, they were Coordinators. They would manage.

Baresha's WASP took position underneath the ship, firing its torpedoes as quickly as he could as his unit travelled the length of the ship. Kouda's unit steadied its rocket dart launcher, and the pod-like weapon's launching mechanism spun, spitting out miniature high-explosive munitions that tore a series of ragged holes through the ship's starboard side. Fredric added his firepower to the port side, and soon the _Fraser_-class was sinking with multiple holes in its sides and bottom.

An alarm beeped, and Fredric turned the WASP to see a torpedo heading straight for him. Raising the GINN WASP's phonon maser cannon, Fredric took aim and shot the munition; it exploded, but uncomfortably close to Fredric's position. "Be careful," Fredric warned his teammates. "I don't have any intel on this new weapon."

"It seems to be related to a report from the Second Naval Fleet about rockets fitted with multiple warheads," Kouda replied. "The fleet encountered them in a skirmish, and their primary delivery system seems to be vertical-launch systems from cruisers; upon hitting the water, the rocket would release miniature torpedoes that would hunt for anything that resembled the profiles of ZAFT mobile units and ships."

Fredric moved his GINN WASP forward towards the cruisers of the OMNI fleet, Kouda and Baresha following behind. "I don't remember the missile being seen at all before this."

"It was only launched from a single ship during that skirmish," Kouda said. "But it seems that OMNI has managed to mass-produce them for this fight." Another alarm sounded, and Fredric and Kouda moved to cover Baresha's unit. Explosions rocked the underwater currents as phonon maser and dart rockets met seeker torpedoes.

"Well, whatever they're using to make them, it seems pretty effective," Fredric said, as he watched allied GOOhN and GINN WASPs IFF tags begin to flash yellow or disappear off the tactical screen. "We better throw our weight in this fight… it seems that those torpedoes are actually worth something."

"This is because our plan has the fleet hanging back for a separate strike," Baresha said. "They know our subs are here, but they assume that they're hiding in the back lines and with silent running, they can't detect them, and thusly they won't equip anti-ship missiles to launch. We're the bait in this battle, and OMNI is taking it, albeit with more ferocity than expected."

_Speaking of which, just where it the fleet?_ Fredric thought. "Even if we can't see them because of silent running, they should be here by now."

No one in Fredric's squad had the time to reply, because a second wave of anti-MS torpedoes sped towards them, followed by a third and fourth wave. The GINN WASPs tried to intercept the onslaught of torpedoes, but soon enough the flashes of phonon maser fire and rocket dart trails begun to falter as the torpedoes found their mark. Giving his tactical map a cursory glance, Fredric noticed that the GOOhNs were not faring better and the DINNs were busy with the carriers' fighter contingents and the cruiser screen. "So much for sinking their anti-submarine capability," Fredric thought aloud. "Now all their surface ships have anti-MS naval capabilities as well!"

"Perhaps-" Kouda's voice was cut off as an explosion engulfed his GINN WASP. It wasn't a direct hit, but the blast was strong enough to rip an arm and leg off the MS, as well as wreck its backpack engine. Disabled, the unit slowly sunk, a fierce stream of bubbles leaking from multiple points on its frame.

"Baresha!" Fredric shouted. "Abandon your weapon and retrieve Kouda!"

"What? But-" Baresha begun. As the team's heavy-hitter, abandoning his torpedo launcher was equivalent to throwing away half of the team's firepower. Add that to the loss of Kouda's unit, and the drop in the functionality of Fredric's team was tremendous.

"Do it!" Fredric said as he continued weaving through the torpedo trails, abandoning his phonon maser cannon to distract a torpedo. _I won't have a casualty when we're this close to completing our missions on Earth. _"That's an order, dammit!"

Baresha terminated the comm link on his side as he dropped the weapon and dived down to catch Kouda's unit before it could sink beyond the GINN WASP's operational threshold. Fredric caught up and took hold of the drifting torpedo launcher; snagging Kouda's rocket dart launcher, he turned to face the OMNI fleet. "Baresha! Hold on to Kouda; surface if you have to! Just retreat from the battle zone! I'll continue the assault!" Fredric pushed the GINN WASP's engine to maximum, and the mobile suit rumbled, pushing against the water as it sought to achieve its max speed while being weighed down by two weapons.

Just then, his GINN WASP's tactical map flashed red and outlined a circle that read 'KEEP OUT; FLEET APPROACH VECTOR', instead of the usual red arrow indicating an area from outside the map. Fredric and the rest of the surviving pilots and their units came to a dead halt in the water; they continued to intercept any torpedoes coming their way, but even those lessened in number quickly.

Within a minute and even without looking at the tactical map or switching on his acoustics, Fredric could see why it was a circled area. The silent-running _Vosgulov_ submarines had taken position right underneath the OMNI fleet; with the GINN WASPs, DINNs and GOOhNs darting around on the surface, the OMNI fleet had sailed out to meet the enemy over the waters where they could manoeuvre… but that required that the core of their fleet, the cruisers and carriers, move as well.

That left them open to assault from ZAFT's ace card; the submarines. Fredric continued watching with a small measure of awe as a group of sixteen _Vosgulov_ submarines shot through the water at maximum speed towards the cruisers and carriers on the surface, which were clustered together in a tight formation to take advantage of each other's anti-air and anti-sub cover.

Tight groups of bubbles and the occasional flash of light suddenly appearing around the submarine fleet indicated where torpedoes had hit, but those were of the anti-MS variety that had already been launched and either got in the way, or were redirected by their launching ships as a desperate attempt to stop the rush; hardly enough to penetrate the super-hardened hulls of ZAFT's underwater carrier-cruiser submarines. A huge rush of bubbles erupted from the front of the _Vosgulov_ submarines as anti-ship torpedoes, designed to punch massive, jagged and hard-to-repair holes in ship armour, launched forward from all free torpedo tubes towards the OMNI formation.

Fredric jolted himself back to action as ZAFT Operation Command cut into the intercom. "All mobile suit forces, thank you for your hard work. The _Vosgulov_ fleet will now commence a full-on ship-to-ship fleet battle; all forces are to continue their assault to destroy the Morocco Base and its attached fleet."

The first wave of _Vosgulov_-launched torpedoes hit the clustered formation; that proved to be the fleet's undoing. The force of the attack was so great that some of the cruisers were lifted well out of the water from multiple torpedo impacts, their superstructures torn apart from both the explosions and the force of behind thrown through the air. Sea water rained down on the surviving ships, but a person on them could be forgiven for thinking it was a heavy storm; the waters roiled as the second wave of torpedoes impacted the surviving ships.

These were largely aimed at the carriers, and the DINN pilots participating in this operation got a reward for their valiant efforts for flying into a sky full of bullets, as they watched the carriers get torn apart. One of them even got catapulted backwards into another carrier by the force of multiple torpedo hits to its bow; the two sinking ships were wedged together, the fires flaring from behind their hulls extinguishing in clouds of steam as they went under the waterline. The DINNs shot the few remaining F-7D Spearheads out of the sky as the _Vosgulov_ submarines surfaced and begun to launch anti-ground missiles at the Morocco Base, and the GOOhNs and GINN WASPs begun to move into shallow waters and emerge onto the shore.

For the GINN WASPs and DINNs, the battle got significantly easier; supply drops from ZAFT's Third Space Fleet reached the Morocco Base at about the same time, the large pods landing hard on the base's structure. As an added bonus, some of the pods contained mobile suits; three dozen GINNs and a handful of CGUEs rained from the skies, their automatic cannons tearing up the concrete ground of the base.

With anti-air and artillery concentrated on the beach, the sudden appearance of orbital drop forces forced the defenders to split their attention, and this in turn allowed the GINN WASPs to gain a foothold and get to the weapons in the supply pods. Within seconds, Fredric, his unit brandishing a M69 Barrus Heavy Ion Cannon, and the other GINN WASP squadrons were raining fire onto the base. Some of them wielded M68 Cattus 500mm recoiless cannons rather than the Barrus beam cannon; regardless, the weapons were made for anti-ship warfare and their power was overkill for the concrete structures of the base. DINNs flew overhead and unleashed their ordinance on the remaining buildings and defences, and within minutes the second and final phase of the Casablanca Sea Battle was over. Morocco Base depended on the well-armed and well-trained OMNI Third Fleet for defence; once that barrier was past, the base itself was a joke to assail.

Morocco Base fell, and the cheers of ZAFT soldiers filled the Operation Command channel. The only thing that blocked them from a path into the Middle East and Africa was the OMNI Third Fleet; with raids from ZAFT's First and Second Naval Fleets tearing up the OMNI forces and keeping reinforcements from streaming in, it was OMNI's beleaguered Third Fleet against ZAFT's small but determined Third Naval Fleet.

The Bloody Valentine War was going into high gear now.

**CE 70 May 25****th****, Offshore Casablanca, Morocco, North Africa**

**Afternoon 03 56 **

Fredric moved his GINN WASP from the ruined remains of the base and back towards the shoreline, where a basic supply and retrieval camp had been set up. In two hours, the fleet was scheduled to move off to Gibraltar and secure the area there for use in the construction of a ZAFT stronghold. Compared to the fight they had to go through just to gain access to the Mediterranean, securing Gibraltar was going to be easy.

Fredric disembarked from his mobile suit and took off his helmet the moment his feet touched the ground. The smell was different, but it was an unmistakable part of the sea. Fredric took a deep breath.

The reaction was almost instantaneous. Fredric cut off his breath and proceeded to cough violently. The smell of the sea was still there, a warm salty tang different yet familiar compared to the sharp cool taste that was offshore Norway. But carried on the air of the Casablanca Sea were the stench of dead and charred things, and the fumes of burning weapons. It was not a heavy presence; to most people it would have been a minor odour. But to Fredric Koherng, who grew up with the sea, the faint stain that spread through the evening air was a choking miasma darker than the night.

Fredric turned away from the sea, a flittering moment of sadness in his heart. He lost his sea years ago. It was naive to think that he could so easily find a replacement just by getting a posting on Earth.

He pushed those emotions out of his mind and saluted as a _Vosgulov_ captain walked past him. They both wore the green uniform, but the captain had a cap on, and he carried himself with an air of responsibility and pride only commanding officers could have. _I guess I'm still a long way from there_, Fredric thought.

The captain, whose nametag read 'M. Morassim', turned back and saluted. "A good job, pilot," he said, "holding out against OMNI's new underwater anti-MS weapon." He extended a hand towards the pilot. "I would've gone out as part of the MS forces as well, but Operation Command denied me the chance to."

"It was a wise choice, sir," Fredric replied. "A captain needs to command his own ship; it is infinitely more important than the mobile suits it carries into battle."

"Or so people say," Morassim said. "Personally, I've found being with fellow pilots more interesting." The captain turned to face the sea. "After all, they're replacing my GINN FEMWS soon. A pity, really, I'd grown to like that unit and its quirks."

"A GINN FEMWS?" Fredric asked. "I thought they were all phased out of the battlefield a while ago."

"Unfortunately," Morassim replied. "Using the GINN chassis for further modification has yielded a unit that is more flexible overall in combat; the GOOhN frame is a watered-down version of the GINN FEMWS and poor in beaching operations like Casablanca's second phase, and the GINN WASP is a multirole unit, not a dedicated anti-ship one; using it to win sea battles alone is a very difficult venture. I just hope that the new delivery they promised me would be as good or better." The captain tugged his cap over his head. "Looks like the stench won't be gone for another day."

Fredric took one last look at the sea. "I guess men of the sea think alike, sir," he said, and both laughed.

Fredric watched the captain walk off as Baresha approached him. "Looks like Kouda will be fine, sir," he said. "About three months to heal a fractured spine and other physical injuries."

Fredric let out a breath that he had been subconsciously holding. "Good," Fredric said. He turned around. "It's been nice to work with you guys."

"Aren't you heading back to space with us, sir?" Baresha asked.

"I asked for this posting because I need to settle something," Fredric said. "Besides," he said, smiling bitterly, "command is not my right. Not yet."

"I… see," Baresha said. He saluted. "I guess this is where we part ways, sir."

Fredric returned the salute as well. "Have a safe trip back to Carpentaria," he said. "All the best."

As Baresha turned to board one of the two _Vosgulov_ submarines that would be returning to Carpentaria, Fredric turned back to the pilots and personnel still milling around the makeshift camp on the beach. He'd asked for the posting even before this operation, so there was no turning back.

Fredric turned as another pilot approached him. "Are you… Fredric Koherng?" the man asked. At his side was a woman, presumably his wingmate. Her eyes were a deep blue, but all Fredric could see in them was a dark coldness.

"I am, sir," Fredric replied. "How may I be of assistance?"

"You requested a posting to a terrestrial squadron operating in this region prior to the Casablanca operation, am I correct?" The man checked his datapad once. "I'm Alan Reidr, commander of the Reidr Team, specializing in commando operations." He held out his hand to the woman beside him. "This is Grace Sakerfield, my second-in-command."

Grace merely nodded.

Alan held out his hand and smiled briefly. "Welcome to the team," he said. "We're going to be skipping Gibraltar's housewarming and going straight to Africa directly as an advance squad. I hope you packed your shades."

**Afterword:**

_The Casablanca Sea Battle was one of the first major ZAFT operations after the building of Carpentaria, and served as a gateway conflict into ZAFT establishing their Gibraltar base, and eventually pushing into Africa._

_While no major characters from the series appear in this battle, I've included Marco Morassim, the ZAFT submarine commander who attacked the Archangel somewhere halfway through the TV series, as a third-party participant. _

_ Information had it that in the side-stories, Marco piloted a GINN __F__ighter __E__xperiment __M__aneuver in __W__ater & __S__urface (GINN FEMWS for short) before the production of the ZnO; a GINN variant used as a test/field prototype for the eventual GOOhN, and different from the GINN WASPs used by other pilots. It's also of interest noting that he crossed swords with Jane Houston (as the "White Whale" she would later become famous piloting the Deep Forbidden and its variants), then assigned to OMNI's 21st Anti-Submarine Warfare Squadron in the Coral Sea on CE 70, April 10th. I've included his GINN FEWMS as a cursory nod to the SEED-MSV as well._


	4. Chapter 4: Joke in Bad Taste

_**Author's Note:**_

_This fanfic is to write upon some of the events in Gundam SEED and SEED Destiny that are not touched upon or mentioned in-series, but their dates are listed on Gundamofficial and GundamWikia and are thus treated as part of canon. They are therefore based upon actual happenings in the Cosmic Era universe, but the events within them are open to interpretation._

**Chapter 4: Joke in Bad Taste**

**CE 70 April 1st, Tottori Prefecture, Chugoku Region, Japan, Republic of East Asia**

**Morning 10 10**

With summer approaching, the weather had begun to heat up. Kaguya Sakamoto, 21, slowly eased herself into the chair, her mind still halfway from waking up and her bed hair giving her the appearance of a large round-head basin brush. She had a thesis on artificial mechanical power due in a week's time when she was due to return to Kyoto University, but she hadn't even started on it yet.

She blamed that series of books on old-world racial divides she borrowed from the campus library before returning to Tottori; it was just too damn interesting to read on how people of different shades of white with different religions routinely butchered each other during humanity's early years as a civilization. If the synopsis for the next book was any indication, it would deal with how being darker-skinned than other humans was due cause for subhuman mistreatment back before the Cosmic Era came about.

Switching on her computer, Kaguya watched sleepily as the unit booted up… and then shut down.

Kaguya gave the CPU a light kick; when that failed to yield any significant results, she gave an irritated sigh and bent down. The power switch was on, and all the wires were where they should be.

Kaguya tried the power button again. Nothing.

It was then that she realized that even the air-conditioning was not working. She frowned and tried the controls for that as well, but the machine stayed silent.

In the first place, her computer shutting down was already unusual. Kaguya had put the workstation together herself earlier this year and she just spent the day before yesterday cleaning out the hard drive; hardware problems, age, and software infections were out of the questions. Adding to that was the air-conditioning not working.

Just then, a knock sounded out on her room door. Kaguya opened the door and was greeted with the worried face of her father, Kouya Sakamoto. "The television and heater are out too," he said. "Is anything working in your room?"

"Nope," Kaguya shrugged. "Have you tried the main switches?"

"Akiko tried it," Kouya said, referring to his wife. "But nothing worked."

Kaguya looked towards the sky, the voice of yesterday's news reporter on the rising tensions in-between ZAFT and OMNI suddenly flowing into her mind. _I hope that has nothing to do with this freak event…_

**CE 70 April 3rd, Tottori Prefecture, Chugoku Region, Japan, Republic of East Asia**

**Night 09 06**

Kaguya sat, staring at the dark ceiling. Her parents had gone to sleep early that day and over the past two days she found reading a book with torchlight somewhat taxing on her eyes even with her glasses on, since as the hours, and later days wore on it became apparent that the problem extended beyond Tottori… possibly beyond Chugoku. The thought of the problem extending beyond Japan scared her somewhat.

Kaguya had never thought that the night could get this quiet. Without lights, the house felt cold. Unwelcome. Deserted.

Throughout the two days since the outage, Kaguya had gone to town to see what she could do. Everywhere she went, she saw that people were getting worried; stocking up on dry edibles, batteries, clothing. There had been a more than a few accidents since the day started; thankfully the local police force had deployed to watch over the city. So far, she hadn't seen nor heard anyone involved in robbery, looting, arson, murder and jaywalking on empty roads yet.

Kaguya sighed, got up, and left her torch where it was as she walked up the stairs to her room; there was just enough moonlight to navigate the house. There was electricity provided at 7pm, but those were reserves from the city backup generators; as a mechanical student, Kaguya knew that recharging those using non-nuclear sources of energy was going to take the whole night, if one was to be optimistic. And the fact that a blackout of this magnitude was going on meant that the nuclear plants were obviously out of commission.

Kaguya only hoped that the nuclear plants hadn't exploded, or had something similarly damaging happen to them. For the hour that electricity was provided, the radio had constantly supplied news of the other prefectures, and they were largely in the same boat as Tottori; yet talk on the nuclear plants were conspicuously lacking. If something required them to evacuate in the middle of the day or night, they wouldn't see it coming.

Kaguya had set her hand on the door to her room when she noticed rustling sounds coming from her room. Slowly opening the door, she felt her blood froze as a shadowed figure rummaged through her drawers. Her belongings were strewn all over the floor.

The door squeaked, and the figure froze. Kaguya, deciding to go for it, rushed into her room hollering, and made a grab for the kendo _shinai_ hanging on her wall that she got during her middle school days. It was as much a memory of her younger days of discipline, as it was a memento dedicated to her friend. A keychain of two shrine maidens hung from it, as a testament to their eternal friendship.

Bad move. The figure caught her before she could get to her weapon and pinned her down on her own bed, one hand covering her mouth and muffling any screams she intended to make. Up close she could see that the figure belonged to a man; his eyes were wide, perhaps with excitement or some other feeling, and his face bore a terrible grin.

Kaguya struggled harder as she felt sensation in places she'd rather not have; the man was taking the blackout as a chance to break and enter, and now that he managed to snag Kaguya, to take his time with her as well. Kaguya struggled harder, but with her lying down with one arm pinned under her and the other with the man's elbow pressing down, her efforts were less than futile. She tried to scream louder as the man ran his hand across her thigh, but his grip was unreasonably strong, and with the intruder's other hand over her mouth all that came out was a slightly louder muffled sound.

A sudden dull thud sounded out, and the man's eyes rolled into the back of his head before collapsing over Kaguya; with a grunt of disgust, she rolled him off her bed and onto the floor. "Thank you, Father," she said, trying to keep her voice level. She was somewhat thankful that the room was dark, so her father couldn't see the tears that had welled up at the corners of her eyes.

"For my daughter, anything," Kouya said, nudging the man's unconscious form with the kendo sword and giving him a good kick for measure. "Your mother will be back with some rope soon, and the police will come soon enough." He slowly nudged his daughter out of the room. "Go sleep in my room."

Kaguya could only nod mutely. Deep down, she felt a bit of disgust at not reaching the sword first; if it had been her friend, Mei Kenroukuen, Kaguya was sure that the man would be out cold even without a weapon.

**CE 70 April 10th, Tottori Prefecture, Chugoku Region, Japan, Republic of East Asia**

**Afternoon 12 01**

Kaguya watched the clouds drift past in the sky. It was nine days since Japan suffered its nuclear power outage. Right now the region was getting by with an hour of power each day, but even that was gone as the power had not returned since yesterday. People were stretched to the breaking point. Canned food was running out and perishables were long gone; Kaguya had caught wind of lootings on the news. It was few and far between, but it was there.

She had ventured downtown into Tottori's city area two days ago, and the place was deserted. Not a single shop was open, and not a soul was seen. She returned to her house, but even the place was silent. The entire neighbourhood was silent. People kept to themselves, muting themselves to preserve any semblance of sanity they had left. The fear of the end of the world was high; the people of Earth had been scared well when the Type S influenza struck years ago and rumours had it that the Coordinators had made it to avenge the killing of George Glen, the first Coordinator.

Now another incident on par with that was going on. People were more than scared; they were terrified. Yesterday's news had touched on electrical failure in one of the city's hospitals; they couldn't get the power back on, and people in intensive care started dying one after another. The culprit was revealed to be a person who had gone mad from all the fear going on. Pitiable.

As for Kaguya's household, things were far from well either. Akiko had fallen sick, and she had never been strong to begin with. The stress of recent events and the lack of proper food were all contributing factors to Kaguya's mother falling ill. To top things off, their own food supply was running low. Kaguya had opted to head off to town to see if any shops were still open.

"I'm heading out now," Kaguya said, pushing her bike through the front gate of her house. The entire neighbourhood was largely silent as most of the general population had elected to flee to the other major cities, despite no news of refugee camps being set up. Kaguya could hear the creak of her bicycle's gears in the still air.

"Don't overdo it," Kouya replied, watching his daughter from the front door. "And bring this with you, just in case." He handed Kaguya her kendo _shinai_.

"Mm… thanks," Kaguya said. "I'll be back by nightfall either way."

As Kaguya rode off, her thought wandered to her mother, sick and in bed, and without medicine. So far no aid relief had come to Tottori; rumour had it that the relief was going to the major cities instead. The city and its districts were dead, the people of Tottori were told to keep to their houses and stay locked up at night for their own safety.

It took twenty minutes for Kaguya to reach downtown Tottori, and immediately her heart sank as the shops came into view. The ones that mattered, the shops that sold foodstuffs, were all gone. Some had broken windows. Others had their shelves dragged out. Kaguya passed by one and saw that even a chain and padlock had not stopped someone from smashing down the shop's doors.

The sound of cries reached Kaguya's ears, and she stopped her bike right before a cross junction. Setting it aside, she took out her _shinai_, which she brought with her, from the bike's front basket and proceeded down the pavement; its keychain swayed softly as Kaguya crept closer to the source of the noise. Rounding the corner, she saw two men kicking at another; the victim was covering his head and trying to keep the blows from landing on the pack of bread he cradled in his arms.

"Hey! Stop!" Kaguya cried out. "Leave him alone!"

The moment Kaguya's voice sounded out, the two men turned around. "Who the fuck are you?" one of them snarled, the bangs under his eyes a stark contrast to his pale face, and his unkempt hair giving him the apperance of a madman. "Bitch, if you don't want to get hurt, I suggest getting out of here."

Kaguya swallowed once and held up her _shinai_ in the ready posture. "Y-You can try!" she said, trying to keep her cool. "J-Just step away from him!"

The two men, apparently deciding kicking a live person would be preferable to kicking a half-dead one, advanced towards Kaguya; the other man who was silent snatched up a metal pole from the roadside.

As the victim ran off, Kaguya watched the two men approaching her with trepidation. A hundred thoughts ran through her mind; and then the memories from the incident in her room seven days ago hit her full force, and she nearly dropped to her knees. She held on, however, as she raced through all the endless possibilities she could use to extract herself from this sticky situation.

Just then, the same victim that had ran off earlier returned with a basket. Before Kaguya could register that fact in her mind, he threw it over the pole-brandishing man approaching Kaguya.

Not one to waste a chance, Kaguya willed herself to remember all the training she did three years back as a member of her school's kendo team, and jabbed straight at his chest, throwing the man off-balance. Seeing as the man wasn't down, she continued, hitting the handicapped assailant as hard as she could on his ribs. With a yelp, the man collapsed onto the floor in a heap.

"You bitch!" The other man said. In the time it took for Kaguya to fell the armed assailant, the other had covered the distance in-between them, and his grip on her sword-arm was surprisingly strong for someone who looked like he was almost dying. "I'll kill you!"

Kaguya never got to answer as the second man went down like a sack of bricks, the victim having hit him with the metal bar that he picked up from the floor. Giving Kaguya one last look, the victim ran off, leaving Kaguya flexing her wrist and with two comatose people lying around her.

Ignoring the prone bodies on the ground, Kaguya entered the shop that was beside them. As she could guess, it was a grocery shop, and as she could also guess, it was empty. Canned food sold out within the first three days and perishables did not keep well without refrigeration. The few packs of vegetables she could see in the inert cooler had begun to turn yellow.

It was the same wherever she went. Not a single intact shop with food worth taking back home. Smashed windows were the least of her worries; she encountered more people like the two she had to fight against, and luckily for her they were too preoccupied with searching, or just didn't care that they might be watched. Not that Kaguya would let them find her easily; if there wasn't anyone's life in danger, she wasn't going to stick her neck out.

Despite spending the day roaming the entire deserted city, she got no results, and as she continued on she felt more and more at unease. Tottori wasn't a populous town by any measure, but the city being this quiet was more reminiscent of a world-ending apocalypse than a mere power failure. There wasn't a single shop that was open or stocked, and all the offices were, by extension, closed. The streets were spacious and Kaguya would have normally been entertained by the fact that she could ride through Tottori's inter-city highways without adhering to rules, but the general atmosphere, complete with the occasional parked car and the scraps that drifted across the road from whatever wind was blowing made Kaguya feel unease.

The sun was almost down when Kaguya finally returned home only to find her father waiting at the front door. What little light remained that allowed Kaguya to see her father's expression caused her to stiffen with worry; she had never seen her father wear a facial expression like that before.

"Akiko…" Kouya begun. "She doesn't have much time." He set a hand on his daughter's shoulder. "Go and see her."

To Kaguya, her father's words felt like she was hit by a truck. Running up the staircase to the second level of her house, she entered her mother's room. "Mother!" Kaguya said, stumbling to get to her side. "Speak to me!"

It felt like an eternity for Akiko to open her eyes, and when she did, her voice was no louder than a whisper. "Kaguya…" she rasped.

Kaguya could feel the tears welling up behind her eyes, but she said nothing. Her mother had always had a weak constitution, and she had been sick for two days with no medication. Both Kaguya and Kouya had tried all they could, but with no electricity making proper meals was out of the question. Even the water had cut out on them two days ago; no one in the house has had an opportunity to bathe, to say the least.

"Go… to Kobe," Akiko continued. "At least… there…"

"I'm not going to leave the two of you here," Kaguya said, the tears flowing down her face now. "I'm not leaving."

Akiko tried to grip her daughter's hand harder, but to Kaguya, the difference was negligible. "…Tottori …is dead…" Akiko said, stopping to catch her breath. "Even if it's just you…"

Kaguya waited, but there was no response. The only thing that kept Kaguya from panicking was that she could see her mother's chest rise with every breath she took.

Kouya pulled Kaguya away from the bed. "She's right, and I agree to it too."

"No," Kaguya said. "If so, the two of you are coming with me as well!"

Kouya shook his head. "You should know better than anyone that the electric cars were useless from day one, and the aid we were promised were a lie," he said. "We still have a few cans of food left... a torch and spare batteries to go with it." Kouya gazed into his daughter's eyes. "There is no choice to this matter, Kaguya. The town has left, and those that opted to stay and wait for empty promises of salvation are going to suffer for it."

Kaguya tried to deny it, but deep down she knew that her parents had a point. Still, to leave her parents behind was unthinkable. "I… I'll think about it."

"Kagya!" Kouya started, but his daughter was already in her room, and quickly shut the door.

Inside her own room, Kaguya's mind was a whirl of emotions. She had never imagined that the lack of necessities would actually force her parents to have her leave town for other places. What would happen to her parents if she wasn't here? There was no medicine, no food and hardly any water. And despite the town being empty, today's incidents in the city proved that there were still people living in Tottori. What would they do to her family?

Hugging her pillow, her mind continued running through the endless bad endings that she would encounter. Slowly, she fell asleep, her dreams filled with nightmares of burning cities and one-eyed monsters marching into her house. She tried to beat them off, but there were just too many…

A loud thud woke Kaguya up. The first thing she remembered was the third night of the power outage, and she reached for her _shinai_.

Creeping out of her room, she headed downstairs, where the noise had come from. A shuffling sound came from the kitchen, and she stiffened her grip.

Just before Kaguya could get a clear view of the kitchen in the dark, her foot touched something wet. Looking down, she saw a prone body on the floor… and then she recognized her father's form.

She had stepped into a pool of his blood.

Before Kaguya could scream or do anything, another shuffling sound reminded her of her original purpose, and she felt something well up inside her. All reason and stealth forgotten, she walked right up to the figure crouched at the kitchen cupboards.

The figure seemed to take notice and turn around, but at that moment Kaguya jabbed as hard as she could, aiming for the intruder's head. She heard a cry of pain, but that didn't stop her; she continued beating down on the intruder. "You bastard!" she screamed. "Go! To! Hell!"

"Raargh!" the intruder roared. All too late, Kaguya noticed the intruder grabbing something off the floor; the next thing she knew, stars exploded in her vision as the metal bar smashed into the side of her head. The blow wasn't lethal, but it was heavy enough to cause some damage.

Reeling from the impact, Kaguya stumbled backwards, dropping her only weapon onto the floor. _I have to do something_. The thought kept entering Kaguya's mind. _Anything. _

As Kaguya held on to the kitchen counter for support, and the intruder advanced menacingly on her, her hands grasped something. She couldn't see what it was, but deep down in her mind something reassured her that it was a handle.

And when it was a handle, there was bound to be something at the other end. She summoned the last of her strength and pulled as hard as she could and brought the handle, and whatever it was attached to, across the front of the intruder. The last thing she heard as she fell backwards, her consciousness fading, was a savage scream.

**CE 70 April 11th, Tottori Prefecture, Chugoku Region, Japan, Republic of East Asia**

**Morning 09 23**

Morning greeted Kaguya with a splitting headache and a deep feeling of trepidation, as though she had forgotten something important.

And the smell of blood.

Kaguya withdrew in shock as she noticed the man lying on the floor. It was the intruder from last night, and also the man that Kaguya had met on her little trip to the city yesterday. The one that got taken out from behind. Blood had pooled around the man's neck, and the knife that Kaguya had stuck into his neck last night was covered in dried blood.

Overcome with nausea, Kaguya stumbled out of the kitchen when she realized what she had forgotten; her father. Getting as fast as she could to his side, Kaguya shook his body. The sigh of dried blood around his head and the floor gave pause to Kaguya's resolve, but she had to try. Kneeling down beside Kouya's facedown body, Kaguya shook him lightly. "Father?"

Kouya remained silent.

Emotion hit Kaguya like a brick; within an instant, she could feel the tears welling up in her eyes. The memory of her talk with her father last night was still so clear in her mind, she could practically repeat word for word both sides of the conversation.

And now? Now her father was dead. Done in by a man who broke into their house.

Moving her father into a sitting position and placing him against the wall, Kaguya headed upstairs and to Akiko's room to check on her mother. The first thing she noticed when she entered was that Akiko's face bore an uncanny look of peace.

Kaguya didn't have to do anything else. She placed her hand underneath her mother's nose, and felt nothing. She touched her mother's face, and her skin was cold. Overcome with emotion, Kaguya simply rested her head on her mother's bed and cried silently. It took hours for her to finally stop, for her to pack what remained in the house that was valuable, and leave.

Her mind was blank. Only one train of thought existed.

_There will be aid at Kobe. And a government presence._

_ I must get to the government presence._

Tottori had simply become a statistic in a long list of areas forcibly depopulated by ZAFT's deployment of Neutron Jammers.

**CE 70 April 18th, Shiso, Hyogo, Kasai Region, Japan, Republic of East Asia**

**Morning 08 41**

Kaguya slowly pushed her bicycle along, her last worldly possessions contained in its front basket. Those consisted of a few articles of clothing, a water bottle, and a modest stack of canned food. She had ran out shortly after leaving her house… after leaving Tottori, and the amount she had right now was from savaging. Dropped cans, breaking into houses to search them out, even prying them from the hands of dead people…

Kaguya had done everything she could to stay alive for the past ten days. She rummaged through her bike's front basket, bringing out the plastic bottle. It was almost half-empty, and Kaguya noted dully that she should find another water source.

All along the way Kaguya had saw cars parked to the side of the road, their batteries dead. Fuel-driven vehicles went out of fashion with the change of the calendar to CE thanks to dwindling crude oil supplies, and all around here were the signs of a massive crowd of people who were moving on foot.

All that was gone, however. Kaguya continued pushing her bike along, when a suddenly sound made her jump. Turning around, she noticed that a body had fallen from a sitting position. Ignoring the stench, Kaguya continued through.

Reaching a house that seemed well-locked, Kaguya went up to it. Knocking once, she waited for a response.

Nothing.

She tried the door and it was locked, so Kaguya did the next logical thing to do; she searched for a sizable rock, and hurled it at the glass doors of the house balcony.

The sliding doors shattered, and Kaguya took great care to get in without getting her skin or clothing caught on the glass fragments still hanging on the metal doorframe. To her left was the corpse of someone clawing at the main door; Kaguya was thankful that it was locked, else she would be dealing with dead people falling onto her.

Searching the house yielded two more corpses and two large bottles of water. By the looks of it, it seemed to have been a suicide pact… though by the way the first corpse was positioned it seems that the three living in the house had a rough start.

Kaguya carried the two bottles back where she came from, and turned back to bow at the house before moving back to her bike. She wasn't above stealing from the dead to survive now, but she still wanted to assure herself that she wasn't above the level of a petty thief.

Continuing on her way, Kaguya trudged on. She had covered up her parents' bodies as best as she could, but she doubted that it could do anything anyways. The hour of electricity per day had been stretched to once every three days, or at least, that was what she heard two days ago when she managed to find a radio and tested it out.

More news had come in as well, unfortunately. It turned out that ZAFT had been the one dropping nuclear-inhibiting devices all over the Earth as a measure against nuclear weapons; this in turn shut down almost all nuclear plants. People had already begun calling it the April Fool's Crisis.

Adding to that, ZAFT, taking advantage of the world being in turmoil, invaded on the second day of the outage and established a base in Carpentaria, Australia by the third day, trouncing the Earth Alliance fleet sent to stop them. The electricity had cut out soon after, with its last news telling all citizens to move to their respective prefecture's capital city.

Kaguya continued trudging on. In the space of a week, her life had literally gone to hell. She had to step on the bodies of others to continue living; her parents, the person she knifed to protect herself, and the faces of the dead that she stole from.

Kaguya continued her solitary march.

**CE 70 April 23rd, Kamigori, Ako District, Kasai Region, Japan, Republic of East Asia**

**Afternoon 02 34**

It was another five days before Kaguya finally arrived at a semblance of large-scale civilization. From Kamigori, it would be another three-day journey, assuming she wasn't robbed or had to stop to search for supplies, to the outskirts of what she could call the city of Kobe. That place was her best hope; she might be able to find aid there, and she could even join the relief workers. Simply taking and not giving was weighing on her soul.

Or she could follow the dark whispers in her heart, telling her to find a way to get into the Federation forces. Get a gun. Kill some Coordinators. Kill all of those patchup-gene freaks.

Make the people living in the PLANTs suffer the same fate.

Kaguya shook her head to clear her mind of those murderous thoughts.

The streets had a couple of people walking on them, and even one or two on bicycles; Kaguya guessed that they were close enough that aid workers could leave Kobe safely and deliver supplies to them. There was something wrong though; a few of them seemed dressed to leave the area.

Stopping an old man, Kaguya asked the one questions nagging at her. "Where are you all going, sir?"

The old man looked up. "There isn't anything in Kobe now," he pulled his meagre pack tighter, and sighed. "The Republic troops that arrived a few days ago from the mainland barricaded the centre of the city and the hospitals; we're getting barely enough to live. All the aid is going to the people housed in the city center."

Kaguya could scarcely believe her ears. "No," she whispered, shaking her head. "That's not possible… right?"

"It's the truth, Miss," the old man said, and begun walking away. "I'm leaving here… it stinks of the military now."

Kaguya watched as the old man continued walking for a distance, before catching up to him. "Take this," she said, handing him a couple of cans of food. "This is all I can do."

The old man was surprised by her actions, and pushed the cans back to her. "No, you take it. Save someone with it."

Kaguya shook her head. "I'm not going to Kobe for that express purpose." She pressed the cans into the hands of the old man. "Give them to someone else, or eat them. I don't care." Kaguya regretted being more brusquely than she wanted to, but the days of travel, alone, and being wary of every shadow, every noise in the dark and around corners bearing the possibility of being a madman waiting to mob her had wore her patience thin. As for the state of her clothes and ragged looks, she had stopped caring the moment she left Tottori.

Kaguya got on her bicycle and begun to cycle as fast as she could. As the occasional group of pedestrians trickled past her, she cut a path through the wind. She was beyond caring. The thought of soldiers from another land coming in and ordering the locals to do whatever they wanted made her blood boil, but in that instant, she lost her one grip on her mind, and she slipped into the pits of retribution.

_There is a government presence and soldiers at Kobe. My chance of getting a position in the military is higher now._

_ My chance at revenge has come._

**CE 70 April 29th, Republic Relief Aid HQ, Central Kobe, Kasai Region, Japan, Republic of East Asia**

**Morning 08 03**

Kaguya awoke, for the first time in nearly a month, to the smell of clean bed sheets. Granted, it was the women's dormitory and it wasn nowhere near the comfort of her own house, but still, the bed was clean. Not grass, not mud, but a proper bed.

She had entered Kobe's central area two days before, and the old man's information had been right. Desperately hungry and thirsty from having to cut down on searching time for supplies (she couldn't do so in a mildly-populated area without looking like a thief, anyways, and surviving on scraps was painful if not downright suicidal), Kaguya had stumbled up to the front gates of the Federation barricade and, while she was still half-lucid, screamed that she wanted to sign up as a soldier.

They had revived her with a glucose drip, and sent a recruiter to ask for Kaguya's qualifications. Kaguya was somewhat surprised at the effectiveness of getting in, but the fact that she was a mechanic in her last year pretty much guaranteed her position.

She turned over in her bed, the bed frame's creaking echoing around the empty dormitory. The sight of her pressed uniform greeting her. She had thanked the heavens when they had handed her the white-orange jumpsuit of mechanics; the thought of prancing around in a pink uniform with a miniskirt irked her.

The old man had been somewhat mistaken about the troops in this camp. Granted, the troops came from the Republic of East Asia, but instead of the fatigues of the Republic, these troops wore the patch of OMNI on their uniforms alongside their Republic symbols.

It couldn't have turned out better. Now Kaguya had a straight path into the military of OMNI, the military arm of the Earth Alliance. She would be sent to various places around the world as a mechanic, and get a first-hand seat of how things were done.

She got dressed and checked her schedule card; it said to report to the personnel office as soon as possible with her name and ID. Walking out, she nearly bumped into a fellow colleague, this one dressed in the white livery of an enlisted officer.

Kaguya, still feeling weak, fell flat on her rear. Still trying to get her bearings, she accepted the hand of the officer that she knocked into. Her nametag read "Asanogawa Y.", and the narrow yellow band on her uniform collar indicated her 2nd Lieutenant ranking.

Kaguya shirked back a little as the Asanogawa frowned. "Are you sure you are a mechanic? You look too weak to lift a toolbox."

"I… uh… just arrived the day before," Kaguya said. Asanogawa's piercing glare was somewhat unsettling.

"Take care," the officer said. "ZAFT is just right on OMNI's doorstep… goodness, people joining up left and right for revenge and such…" Asanogawa grumbled as she walked away.

Kaguya watched as the officer rounded a corner before disappearing. Clutching the keychain she had pulled off her busted _shinai_ before she entered the OMNI relief camp, she headed towards the personnel office.

**CE 71, May 25th, OMNI Panama Base Hangar G-14, Panama Spaceport, Panama, Central America **

**[Battle of Porta Panama, Gundam SEED Phase 37] **

**Afternoon 12 04**

Chief Petty Officer Kaguya Sakamoto's vision blurred, the taste of blood on her mouth.

_Am I… going to die… here?_

The only thing she could see was her free hand still clutching the keychain she had painstakingly kept with her all throughout the Bloody Valentine War.

_Just when the Alliance got mobile suits… just when I thought we could win this… just… when I thought… I could… put the memories… of… my parents… to rest…_

Kaguya was vaguely aware of her body and legs being pinned under something, and her other arm had a dull, throbbing pain. Something warm and wet was bubbling out of her mouth and it was getting exceedingly difficult to breathe.

Panama Spaceport, one of OMNI's remaining paths to space, got attacked by ZAFT, presumably seeking revenge for their failure at JOSH-A. Panama fell, thanks to some weird weapon ZAFT brought in; Kaguya recognized an EMP charge in the air, the feeling of something crawling all over her skin, seconds before the entire Panama Base complex, built into the mountains that housed the Panama mass driver, has collapsed thanks to the mass driver explosively fragmenting into the mountainside.

The hanger was silent, and Kaguya could hear her own ragged breathing.

_Mei…_

Kaguya clutched the keychain tighter as she felt her consciousness slipping off into a great darkness.

_ I want… to… go back… to the… old days… before… my hatred… before… the… w… war…_

**Afterword:**

_Firstly, I apologize for the total lack of military combat in this chapter._

_The April Fool Crisis was a economical disaster caused by ZAFT's wanton drop of their Neutron Jammer Canceller devices onto the surface of the Earth, in an attempt to block all potential nuclear threat to ZAFT forces. Unfortunately, that had the effect of shutting down most, if not all of the world's nuclear plants, and with the plants being heavily relied upon since the end of fossil fuels it was a great blow indeed._

_Most nations in the wake of complete power outage were lucky to get away with major riots and large-scale property damage. The implied happenings referenced in the anime indicated that hunger became the sole reason to kill and steal someone's else's food during the days of dearth that followed. People froze to death in far north and south, and society and its necessities all but ceased to function. ZAFT however still fought OMNI, which implied that OMNI wasn't very diligent in their aid efforts. _

_The anime does not touch on how a semblance of power was restored other than leaving us to assume that they had to rely in wing energy or the like to get by, but it seems both highly likely and unlikely that the areas around nuclear plants had their N-Jammers dug out. While power wasn't a problem in the series, firstly the N-Jammers had a ridiculously large operation range; it's not stated, but they were enough to cover the Earth in their inhibition signals even when miles underground. As well, by reactivating the plants there was nothing stopping OMNI from making more nuclear-based weaponry (like mines, or dirty bombs) from the nuclear waste, which as the series showed did not happen. The plants, obviously, are not thermonuclear plants, and an interesting point to note is that the Archangel carried thermonuclear engines, which is nuclear fusion and most likely is unaffected by the N-Jammers (Most modern fusion require fission starters, but the fact that the Archangel is running should say something about future fusion processes). Fortunately for ZAFT, OMNI never considered using that to build a hydrogen bomb, which would undoubtedly be more powerful than their dinky-pinky nuclear missiles._

_Ergo, the most likely possibility is large-scale solar panel construction, or they actually did burn thruster fuel… although that's just me being ignorant. I'm not a science student._

_EDIT: It seems that Japan is not part of the Atlantic Federation that I've assumed it was, but part of the Republic of East Asia instead, and the parts of the tory relevent to this fact has been changed. I will effect further changes if needed.  
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	5. Chapter 5: The Felling of Yggdrasil

_**Author's Note:**_

_This fanfic is to write upon some of the events in Gundam SEED and SEED Destiny that are not touched upon or mentioned in-series, but their dates are listed on GundamWikia and are thus treated as part of canon. They are therefore based upon actual happenings in the Cosmic Era universe, but the events within them are open to interpretation. This fanfic is also an attempt at showcasing a "what-if" of all sides involved in the wars, and how some of the events within the show might have come to be._

**Gundam SEED: Tales of the Cosmic Era**

**Chapter 5: The Felling of Yggdrasil**

**CE 70 February 22****nd****, Yggdrasil Station Area, Lagrange Point 1 **

**Morning 11 31**

Grace Sakerfield watched as the Moebius mobile armour tumbled out of control and into a piece of debris, ricocheting off and towards the battlefield, its left thruster wing smashed by the 76mm rounds from her GINN High Maneuver Type. She had always preferred the heavier machine cannon to the lighter and faster, but less powerful JDP2-MMX22 27mm variant for the GINN HMT, and the minute loss in speed was negligible. She chalked up the odd equipment choice to bureaucratic meddling.

As she left the Moebius to drift, she turned to face the battle raging outside of the space station Yggdrasil. Hours ago, the operation to capture the space station had begun; ZAFT had been eyeing Yggdrasil for some time because of its powerful sensors and scientific instruments. Were the operation to secure the space station be successful, it would be moved to the PLANTs, where it could be guarded. The station had existed since the start of the Cosmic Era, and on it were information and innovations that could prove useful to the war effort.

Yggdrasil, named after the legendary tree of Norse mythology, was located at Lagrange Point 1, directly in-between the Earth and the Moon. It also served as an intermediate station for travel in-between the two, and the veritable construct had seen much traffic and maintenance. Today, however, all of its historical merits had been forgotten; ZAFT and OMNI troopers battled in its hallways, and outside, fleets fought to take control of it. Fires and craters pockmarked its surface; acceptable damages, to deal with the Alliance's treacherous move of offensively fortifying what was supposed to be a politically neutral construct a few days prior to the battle.

Another reason for the fight over Yggdrasil was because the space station was the build and launch point of the _Tsiolkovsky_. It was the ship that brought back the famous Evidence 01 from Jupiter, the steed of the first Coordinator, George Glenn. The space station held great memories and evidence of the scientific advances since the Cosmic Era, and those had only multiplied since the passing of time.

Grace manoeuvred the GINN HMT through the squad of Moebius units chasing her; the mobile armours were unable to turn and track the agile mobile suit, and thrusters fired as the entire squad struggled to match the GINN HMT's agility. One of the Moebius flipped a hundred-eighty degrees backwards and launched all four of its missiles; its engines flared to counter its momentum, slowing the unit down to a painfully slow crawl as its vector adjusted.

_Too easy_, Grace thought. The GINN HMT danced around the missiles, shooting one of them that came too close. The other three traced a path through space and veered away, their tracking system having lost the GINN HMT.

Wasting no time, Grace pushed the engines of the GINN HMT to maximum, the mobile suit rapidly closing with the Moebius squad again. 76mm rounds cut through the space in-between, and the Moebius unit that fired at her, still trying to regain its speed, erupted in a brief but explosive conflagration as the rounds destroyed its engines and punched through the thin armour surrounding its cockpit, killing its pilot in a messy splatter.

The other Mobius units scattered to regain a semblance of distance in-between them and the GINN HMT. Strictly speaking, mobile armours could outclass the speed of mobile suits, but the recently-developed GINN High Maneuver Type was made to push the speed limit on space-based single-seat fighters; most GINN and CGUE units were more manoeuvrable than mobile armours, but only the GINN HMT could serve as high-speed interceptors on par with Alliance mobile armours.

Regardless, speed did not matter in close-quarter dogfights; in terms of manoeuvrability, the GINN HMT, or for that matter, any other mobile suit, could put the Moebius to shame.

The GINN HMT fired its rifle in a long burst, destroying another three Moebius units as Grace strafed the formation. While a bipedal machine in space seemed a ridiculous concept to some, ZAFT's mobile suits were programmed with "movement data"; to facilitate turning, the mobile suit could use its limbs the same way an astronaut could spin out of control with an unplanned hand wave or kick. For the GINN HMT it would prove to be extremely useful; being able to orient its back thrusters in different directions allowed it to change paths faster, and if its other improved thrusters were factored into the equation the GINN HMT could be said to possess unmatched manoeuvrability. Combined with the onboard computer able to synch limb movement with optimal thruster firing position and other theories too complicated to explain simply, it meant that the GINN HMT could reach out and touch an enemy fighter if the pilot so desired and from any position, and move out of retaliation distance faster than anything else.

Grace sent one last burst of fire over at the fleeing Moebius, the rounds puncturing it in the mid-section and destroying its powerplant. Checking her tactical map, she looked for any signs of her squad; unfortunately, the last run against a battle group from OMNI's Second Fleet had separated them.

Easing the GINN HMT into a moderate cruising speed, Grace continued to have the onboard computer scan for her teammates. ZAFT had deployed several N-Jammers in this battle, and while this cancelled out the option of nuclear retaliation from the Alliance fleets present, it also had the unfortunate effect of disrupting long-range communications and tracing sensors, reducing almost everything down to line-of-sight. With ZAFT's Third and Fourth Fleet engaging the Alliance's First, Second and Third Fleet in the tight space around the massive space station, fighting quarters were tight and stray bullets were more likely to cause death and damage than actual fighting.

Grace's concentration was broken momentarily as the computer let out a shrill alarm. What greeted her weren't the IFF signals of her squadmates, but the rapidly approaching blip of an enemy unit.

Grace frowned. A Moebius' acceleration was nowhere near the speed that the new contact displayed, and it was moving in an erratic manner far more quickly than any Moebius.

The habitat ring attached to Yggdrasil's main shaft made it hard to identify units that hugged its curvature while travelling. Grace was using the same thing to search for her comrades to avoid getting swamped in the battlefield surrounding the space station, but this meant that she wouldn't be able to see whatever came her way either thanks to the N-Jammers.

A Moebius Zero sped into view, the unit's usual orange coloration being blue streaked with jagged white lines instead. Grace frowned as the unit turned in her direction; fighting squads of Moebius was one thing, but a Moebius Zero was another matter entirely. Looking at this new unit, the entire thing just screamed "custom" at Grace.

Grace tracked the Moebius Zero as it zipped around. A dull blaring sounded out in the GINN HMT, the sign of her unit being tracked. Grace hardened her countenance and steadied her grip, and the GINN HMT's powerful lightwave-pulse main thrusters fired up, its emission a brilliant blue in the black backdrop of space.

The GINN HMT leapt forward, and the distance between the two speed-intensive units vanished within a blink. The Moebius Zero, being a superior version of the mass-produced Moebius, carried four additional wire-guided gunpods for multi-directional firepower. ZAFT had considered the technology used in it to be indispensible, and more than once since the start of the war had considered obtaining data on it to produce their own units capable of such a feat.

Right now, however, Grace was more concerned with keeping the Moebius pilot on the edge. Individually the gunpods were no more manoeuvrable than the standard Moebius; using them to great effect depended on how the pilot set up the ideal pattern and situation to bring its firepower to bear. When attached to the Moebius Zero, however, the gunpods' own thrusters and main engines added to the Zero's already-decent specs; the result was a powerful unit with performance on par with that of even a CGUE.

Grace gritted her teeth as her first burst of fire missed the Zero completely; the unit quickly moved to the side, manoeuvring thrusters blazing. The return round from the Zero's linear cannon barely missed Grace's unit; were it to connect with anything vital, Grace would be as good as dead. The same could be said of the Zero; lose a gunpod, lose a quarter of the advantage it currently had over the standard Moebius. Right now both Grace's GINN HMT and the Moebius Zero were eventually matched; the two units danced across space, Grace tracking the mobile armour as best as the computer allowed, and the Moebius Zero putting up an excellent fight as it moved in ways Grace never thought possible for any mobile armour. All it would take was for one of them to take a hit… just one hit, for the fight to quickly sway in the favour of the other.

A gunpod detached from the Zero and quickly re-oriented itself; Grace pushed the controls as fast as she could, and the GINN HMT barely avoided the twin tracer cannon rounds that streaked past as it made straight for the Zero. To the pilot's credit, the Zero quickly changed directions, and both craft and pod shot off towards the inner section of the space station, with Grace giving chase.

Keeping a safe distance, Grace watched as the Zero weaved through the scaffolding that lined the interior of Yggdrasil's habitat ring. Grace could do the same faster, but occasionally a gunpod would detach and fire off twin shots, keeping Grace's full concentration on keeping herself and her unit from danger. Even if she were to clear the scaffolding, the Zero would just break free and engage her again, and she had no guarantee in taking down the Moebius Zero.

Grace scowled as another pair of shots arced towards her GINN HMT, cutting through several scaffolding bars. The GINN HMT fired its shoulder thrusters, avoiding the twin shots by scant centimetres; the debris plinked off the GINN HMT's frame. Distracted by the additional debris, she did not notice the Moebius Zero abruptly change directions and rocket out of the scaffolding maze until the mobile armour was well and away.

The Moebius Zero pulled away, all four of its gunpods detaching from the main craft. Still within the scaffolding, Grace could only watch and curse as fire rained down on her unit. Dodging as best as she could, the GINN HMT sped out of the maze of support bars as fast as it could, crashing through the lighter pipes that the GINN HMT couldn't manoeuvre past in time.

The GINN HMT barely made it out of the barrage, but unfortunately, its 27mm rifle was damaged from the constant debris impact. Grace took one last look at the weapon before tossing it away, and was about to unclip the sword latched onto her GINN HMT's side when she saw the Zero boost off. Two additional GINN HMTs arrived on the scene, 27mm rifles blazing after the rapidly-retreating Moebius Zero; one of them carried two rifles.

"Grace," a male voice cut through the static in the voice line. "Are you okay?"

Grace took a second to steady her breathing before answering. "I'm fine," she said. "Spectacular timing, Commander Coast."

Mikhail Coast, the ace pilot known as the "Doctor", brushed a stray strand of silver hair from his forehead, and motioned for the second GINN HMT to pass its spare rifle over to Grace. "The fighting's intensified," he said, taking a moment to survey the battlefield outside. "Both the Alliance First and Second Fleets have made their final stand at the other side of the station; unfortunately, their last ships choose to ram themselves into the station rather than give it to us. Yggdrasil is close to falling apart."

"What?" Grace said, slowly moving the GINN HMT's hands into position to catch the drifting rifle thrown her way. "Shit! What about ZAFT's fleets?"

"The Third Fleet has retreated due to excessive damage," Mikhail said, his tone still calm. "The Fourth Fleet's due to follow soon if Alliance reinforcements show up."

"That's… " Grace begun, but her sentence was cut short as a hail of fire peppered their position. Grace cursed and shifted her unit into full thruster burn; Mikhail and his wingmate did the same likewise, and all three sped towards the origin point of the weapons fire. The Moebius Zero that fired at them rapidly reoriented itself and sped off towards the outer battle zone.

"We're going to have to cut into the heart of the enemy," Mikhail said. "We've just got new orders; the Alliance's Third Fleet is just close enough to us. Time to get rid of that annoying tumour hanging around the Tree of Life." His machine held out a hand to grab onto the shoulder pauldron of Grace's GINN HMT. "We have no time to spare for chasing false targets."

Grace took one last long glare at the retreating Moebius Zero. "I understand, sir," she said. "Lead the way."

**CE 70 February 22****nd****, Yggdrasil Station Area, Lagrange Point 1 **

**Afternoon 12 17 **

Grace sent the GINN HMT into a light roll sideways as 40mm rounds flashed through the space her unit just vacated. Returning fire, the Moebius that shot at her vanished in a brilliant explosion of shattered parts and red-hot debris. Carefully adjusting the GINN HMT back into formation, Grace turned to check on the other units following behind them; GINN Assault Types escorted by normal GINNs and a couple of CGUEs. To her front and side, two other GINN HMTs fired at incoming targets.

Grace barely had time to spare for her surroundings as the formation sped straight into the core of the Alliance's Third Fleet from right underneath them. At full burn, the GINN HMT was well capable of reaching Mach 5 and above; while even the lightwave pulse engines couldn't sustain that speed for more than a few moments, rapidly pulsing the engines for top speed performance would allow the GINN HMT to approach that limit for a longer period of time.

As well, Grace's squad was just part of an entire battalion's worth of mobile suits; speed up too quickly, and they'll be stuck at the front with no way to sink heavier warships; too slow, and they'll get overwhelmed by the sheer number of mobile armours around them.

One of the GINN Assault Types shuddered as a liner cannon round tunnelled through its centre. The resultant explosion flung the mobile suit's limbs and assorted debris everywhere as the remaining mobile suits scattered to avoid the rain of cannon rounds that were suddenly streaking through their formation.

Grace was about to turn back to assist them, but Mikhail's transmission stopped her hand before she could change directions. "Stay on course," his level voice came in. "Ignore the Moebius; they're simply average bacteria. We're here to deliver the core of the group into the fleet so that they can work their wonders." His GINN HMT fired off a long burst, the bullets smashing into two Moebius units approaching from the front. One spun out of control, while the rounds cut straight through the other, the mobile armour fragmenting even as its inertia carried its debris forward.

At the back of the formation, the escort GINNs and CGUEs returned fire at the Moebius units that flew forward to meet them in combat. The mobile suits made short work of the leading flight of mobile armours, but the speed in between the two groups closed too soon for the escorts to destroy all of them, and soon the entire formation was tangled in a massive dogfight.

"We're counting on you to smash the front, Doctor," a gruff voice said through the main channel. "There're more Moebius units approaching this area; we'll stagger the escorts to deal with them. Get the GINN Assault Types into the centre of the fleet where they can deal with the flagship and its escorts."

"Leave it to us," Mikhail replied, his GINN HMT's rifle sending a steady stream of tracers towards any Moebius that dared approach from the front. The remaining Moebius units scattered to flank the formation, but the escorts turned to meet them.

"ETA 20 seconds to location point," Mikhail said. "All GINN Assault Types prepare for attack formation." The corners of his mouth twisted in a slight grin. "Time to wipe the infection clean."

The remaining GINN Assault Types arranged themselves into groups of three and readied their Cattus rifles. The powerful recoil-dampened cannon was capable of penetrating everything including ship armour, but its firing rate was too slow for dog-fighting, and the GINN Assault Types carried other heavy weaponry and armour that slowed them down in close quarters.

As the three GINN HMTs split the new group of incoming Moebius units down the centre of their formation, the GINN Assault Types rushed through the hole created in the formation. Grace spared a moment to watch as two Assault Types opened fire on a _Drake_-class escort ship, their heavy weapons tearing into the light ship. A few well-placed shots were all it took to sink the _Drake_-class, explosions ripping through its hull. Around her, the other GINN Assault Types begun sinking their fangs into the other ships; missiles and CIWS turrets struggled to track and destroy the determined ZAFT attackers.

An alarm sounded out, and Grace held her breath as she triggered a sudden sideways boost; the linear round barely missed her GINN HMT, and a snarl escaped her lips as she looked at the direction from with the round came from.

The blue Moebius Zero blasted forward, the light from the faraway sun glinting off its frame. All four gunpods detached and shot off in different directions as the main craft blasted forward, bypassing Grace's unit almost instantly.

Grace turned to fire at the unit, but the fire from a gunpod forced her to dodge. The two seconds she took to regain her aim was more than enough for the Moebius Zero to change directions and speed off.

"Stay focused," Mikhail said, as he opened fire on a Moebius that came too close. "Don't let it distract you. We're here to provide cover for the anti-ship teams."

"I understand," Grace said, as she fired on a group of missiles headed straight for her. "I-"

Her sentence was forcibly cut off as she dodged another linear cannon round from above her; this time, however, the blue Moebius Zero wasn't alone, with six more Moebius units and another Moebius Zero in the standard orange and white colours following it. All four scattered as Mikhail and his wingman opened fire.

"Looks like we're forced to play," Mikhail said, the bullets from his GINN HMT's rifle tracing a line through space as it tracked one of the mobile armours. "It seems that the escorts have survived their little tussle." He pushed the engines on his unit to maximum and rocketed off after a pair of Moebius Zero units. "Grace, Rolla, you're clear to engage."

"Roger," Grace said, as she singled out the blue Moebius Zero and chased after it. A rumbling sound encompassed her machine as the lightwave engines did everything to squeeze out more speed, and both units chased each other through a deadly maze of CIWS fire, missiles, and warships clustered together. The Moebius Zero pilot was exceptional, using the fact that Grace's unit would be targeted as a hostile to fly as close as possible to allied warships, borrowing their automated CIWS systems to add to Grace's troubles.

Supremely pissed off by now, Grace fired at the Moebius Zero, the tracer rounds stitching a path through space. For all the good it did, however, the mobile armour dodged it by a fair distance, and two gunpods detached and fired at Grace.

Rolling to dodge, Grace continued her assault, and another gunpod detached, firing at her from dead-on. The rounds missed, but the bright flash as they passed by were enough to blind Grace for a second… enough to slow her reaction by a second.

At the speeds which the two units were fighting in, a second was all it took. By the time Grace regained her concentration, the Moebius had flipped a full 180-degrees; its linear cannon, its most powerful weapon, faced her.

And its last gunpod was missing.

A blast rocked the GINN HMT as twin cannon rounds smashed through the light armour of its left leg from below; the Moebius Zero pilot had used a speed difference to let the gunpod align itself under her unit without reducing the speed of the main Moebius Zero craft. Forced out of control, Grace had no choice but to slow down to avoid rocketing into the _Agamemnon_-class carrier beside her, which thankfully was occupied with returning ranged fire at ZAFT targets in the distance.

Unfortunately, in congested and contested space, all Grace had done was to prolong the inevitable. The Moebius Zero fired, its linear cannon round smashing through the side of the GINN HMT, barely missing the cockpit and powerplant. The impact from the round tearing away at the cockpit exposed Grace to the space beyond as the air vented from the cockpit. She had her helmet on, but the debris swirling around her obscured her vision as another pair of blasts rocked the GINN HMT, this time in its lightwave pulse thrusters. She winced as a particularly large piece of debris stuck into her left arm, and globules of blood and a stream of air begin to leak out of her suit.

Grace breathed out heavily as she spotted an electrical discharge arc across the Zero's linear cannon; it was charging its final shot, the shot that would end her life. Grace pushed the controls; her GINN HMT raised its rifle, but the move just served to throw her off-balance as a gunpod shot at her unit's left arm, the explosion throwing Grace around in the cockpit.

Grace closed her eyes and was almost resigned to her fate when she felt something latch on to her GINN HMT; less than a second later she felt the familiar full-burn of a GINN HMT's lightwave pulse engines, and she gripped the controls as tight as she could as the sudden acceleration pressed Grace into the torn remains of her pilot seat. Whatever had gotten her was accelerating towards the Moebius Zero, and the unit barely dodged a burst of fire that came its way.

Grace passed close enough to the Moebius Zero that she could catch a glimpse of its serial number, ID codes, and more importantly, its insignia as she passed by; a pair of lines, one white, one blue, arranged on a grey circle in the pattern of a möbius strip, the sign of infinity, an unnatural loop.

Then it was gone as Grace rapidly left the battlefield. She saw the Moebius Zero turn, but this time it was to head to the back of the fleet. In fact, the entire Alliance Fleet was moving away from Yggdrasil.

Grace exhaled the breath that she had been subconsciously holding all this while. "Good timing, Rolla."

"Commander Coast told me to follow you," Rolla said. Her GINN HMT had come in the nick of time to snag the remains of Grace's unit, and breaking through the front had proven to be a wise choice; the Moebius Zero was unable to match the GINN HMT's acceleration without its gunpods attached. "He said that it would be a more prudent choice, considering that you sped off straight after the enemy commander." Rolla sighed. "Well, this was a completely useless victory."

Grace frowned as she fumbled for a sealing patch; ripping out the debris piece with a wince, she slapped the tape onto the ripped section of her suit, and the hissing sound of leaking air stopped. "What?"

"Look to your right," Rolla said.

Grace turned, and the sight made her blood boil. The space station Yggdrasil was falling apart; its habitat ring was completely broken into pieces and its main shaft was gored with holes. The pieces from the habitat ring continued to move away from the main shaft, their inherent momentum carrying them away.

"How…" Grace managed, her voice hoarse. "How did this happen?"

"While we were doing our sneak attack on the heart of the Alliance's Third Fleet, their forward guard broke through the lines and attacked the station." Rolla sighed. "I don't think they intended to leave ZAFT with this station in the first place. Infantry reports from the boarding parties that survived indicated that the Alliance troops onboard the station were planting explosives in key locations."

Grace was silent as Rolla dragged her GINN HMT back towards ZAFT's Fourth Fleet. "This…"

"We lost this fight," Rolla said. "To call it a draw would be to word it kindly."

"Dammit," Grace said. She balled her hands into fists, doing all she could to resist the urge to pound the mobile suit's dashboard, which was stuck full of debris fragments. "Dammit!"

The two were silent as they joined the formation of returning ZAFT units. Grace watched as a white-painted GINN HMT passed by, a Barrus Heavy Ion Cannon hoisted on its left shoulder. "That…"

"The unit of Rau le Cruset, the top ace pilot of the Fourth Fleet. It seems that he downed dozens of mobile armours in this fight in addition to three warships." Rolla tapped her helmet once as she thought about the name. "He's got a natural aptitude for close-quarters piloting, or so I'm told."

"I… see…" Grace said, as Rolla manoeuvred her unit into the hangar of a _Nazca_-class destroyer, Mikhail's GINN HMT already secured to the side.

_Is this all I can do?_ Grace thought, as the technicians outside hurried in securing the husk of Grace's GINN HMT to the hangar.

"Don't let it get over your head," Mikhail's voice suddenly cut in. "We're Coordinators, not gods. Like the cells of our body, there are things we cannot do. What's important is to learn."

Grace was silent as let his words sink in. _I know._ Grace pushed herself off the cockpit chair, activating the cockpit doors to leave her ruined machine. _I know._

**Afterword: **

_Well, we've returned to a battlefield conflict with this one, sorry if it seems a bit lacklustre. This chapter features the GINN High Maneuver Type and the GINN Assault Type; the former is a high-speed unit with light weaponry, made famous by Mikhail Coast, an Astray side-story doctor-turned-soldier character nicknamed the "Doctor" for his excellent skills at finding the vital points of an enemy group and destroying them the same way a sturgeon does complicated surgery, along with a penchant for referring to his enemies with medical terminology. The latter is a heavily-armoured unit; it featured in the comic adaptation of Gundam SEED at the Heliopolis battle, but in-series it never appeared._

_Rau le Cruset also piloted a GINN High Maneuver Type at some point before the main story, presumably switching it out for a CGUE after the Grimaldi Front._

_In the CE-verse, Yggdrasil was the name of a space station built during the ending days of the AD calendar system; construction halted during the Reconstruction War and resumed on CE 11. Completed, it became a staging point of sorts during the early years of the CE calendar as the space frontier boomed, and was also the place where the Tsiolkovsky was built and launched by George Glenn on its fate-changing mission to Jupiter. The station was destroyed on February 22, CE 70, during a massive engagement between Alliance and ZAFT forces._


	6. Chapter 6: Rommel's Spirit

_**Author's Note:**_

_This fanfic is to write upon some of the events in Gundam SEED and SEED Destiny that are not touched upon or mentioned in-series, but their dates are listed on GundamWikia and are thus treated as part of canon. They are therefore based upon actual happenings in the Cosmic Era universe, but the events within them are open to interpretation. This fanfic is also an attempt at showcasing a "what-if" of all sides involved in the wars, and how some of the events within the show might have come to be._

**Gundam SEED: Tales of the Cosmic Era**

**Chapter 6: Rommel's Spirit**

**CE 70 May 29****th****, El Alamein, Egypt, OMNI EUROCOM 2****nd**** Armoured Corps Alpha Base **

**Morning 06 32**

Master Sergeant William Culhan ,of the OMNI Land Army's 2nd Eurasian Federation Armoured Corps, 4th Armoured Division, 27th Armoured Brigade suppressed a yawn, as the first rays of light cast a soft glow across the sun-baked landscape. He had just gotten off maintenance four hours ago, and the need for sleep was still foremost in his mind as he lay in his bunk.

As much as William would have liked to roll over and return to the land of the Sandman, he knew that if he were late for the morning roll call, it would be more than just his ass being toasted by the fiery tongue of the warrant officer in charge of them all. He scratched his sand-coloured hair and tossed his blanket off, letting the residual cold of the morning air bring him back into reality.

OMNI, having seen what ZAFT could do at the Casablanca Sea Battle, had deployed the Eurasian Federation's 2nd Armoured Corps into El Alamein, Egypt, in an attempt to stop the predicted ZAFT advance across the land. They had strung the 3rd Armoured Corps at Israel as well, but from what William caught of the reports of new ZAFT mobile weapons, they hadn't been doing well; the 3rd Tank Corps were spread too thin, against an enemy that could move faster than them.

With their frontline communication and garrison points being taken out one after another by ZAFT commando teams across the days since the Casablanca Sea Battle, the 2nd Armoured Corps were in for a tough fight. That was also the reason why their CO had pulled the majority of the 2nd Corps back into the city of El Alamein; in the low-lying buildings, they would have ample cover to pick off the ZAFT mobile suits with the Linear Tank's powerful main gun, supported by aerial target-finding and reconnaissance data. William regretted having to shoot though the fragile brick houses in the more rural parts of the port town, knowing that those buildings were what the new-evacuated population had called home, but it was either that or die to the space freak Coordinators.

As the day wore on, soldiers continued about their duties. William, having nothing better to do, cleaned his carbine, checked the operability of his linear tank, and was done with his general duties by the end of the morning. Having nothing better to do, he decided to take a spare moment and head off into town for a half-day off.

El Alamein was originally a small coastal port and modest town at the end of the old A.D. calendar, and slowly developed into the mid-sized town is was today through several innovations by those in charge, one of them being several solar power stations built around the location, and the sizeable deposit of rare metals discovered near the area around CE 61. For OMNI, especially after the April Fool's Crisis, the power stations were a key asset.

As William walked around town, he recalled OMNI's string of defeats everywhere. Having lost their Morocco Naval Base, and with ZAFT easily taking the poorly-defended Gibraltar Aerospace Base, the Eurasian Federation troops, under OMNI's command, were hard-pressed to keep the ZAFT forces in check, even through massive force deployments, let alone pushing back the invaders. All these, in addition to the battles taking place in space, made William feel that the war was getting out of control, although he felt less strongly about it than most others. For starters, his tank crew and him had already sent four mobile suits and their pilots to hell during the Battle of Victoria, and he didn't plan on doing anything else other than add to his kill score, which had increased by only three since then. Those damned Coordinators were too arrogant for their own good, and William planned to drive that point home every time he engaged in combat.

He walked pass a small shop, the owner inside listening to a radio. Normally he didn't give a damn about the locals, but the words from the radio caught his attention this time. He frowned as he stopped to listen.

"-OMNI EUROCOM refuses to comment on the matter, but many independent military analysts have predicted that with the loss of the Third Armoured Corps to the ZAFT advance at Be'er Sheva-"

"Is this true?" William asked as he hurried over to the radio unit, putting his ears close to listen. His frown turned into a scowl as the news reporter continued to cover what was apparently the total wipeout of the 3rd Tank Corps stationed at Israel.

"Breaking news," the local answered, his heavy accent marring his halting English further. "Just came in two minutes ago!"

Swearing under his breath, William walked back the way he came, his footsteps quicker. If the 3rd Tank Corps had lost their campaign to keep the enemy from advancing across Israel to reach the Suez Canal, then it was highly likely that the 2nd Tank Corps was going to have to pull their own weight in combat very soon.

**CE 70 May 29****th****, El Alamein, Egypt, OMNI EUROCOM 2****nd**** Armoured Corps Alpha Base **

**Afternoon 13 21**

"That was fast," Corporal Gerald Viggens asked, as William walked into the tank hangar, checking over the exterior of their tank. "We're not moving this baby for another two days or so. I was just going to run a data simulation with the fire computers."

"Says you, Viggy," William said to his gunner, as he rapped the barrel of the linear tank. "I don't suppose news just came in that the Third Tank Corps got demolished at Israel?"

"It just did," Gerald said, sitting on the front tank treads to the left. "Seems like whatever ripped them up did a damned good job of it too; aerial recon these past few days showed that whatever ZAFT wreckage was on the field, we could match with at least six to eight more tank carcasses." Gerald jumped off the treads. "There're tank treads as well, but their pattern doesn't match ours."

"ZAFT tanks?" William replied, feeling incredulous. "That's stupid. What kind of tanks could they make that could outmatch ours?"

"Hell if I know," Gerald said. "But it's done, and our tanks just got owned. Those space freaks thought up huge-ass giant robots as single-seat fighters _to use in space_, 'Sarge. If I didn't know better than a caveman, I would have said that they rode in one-eyed rock giants and fought with black magic."

"Get real," William said, even as his mind begun to think about what ZAFT could have made that could allow them to match eight tanks for one mobile weapons platform. Even mobile suits were not as effective on land, and ZAFT's ground victories so far had been relying on their DINN aerial mobile suits, or catching small groups of ground troops unawares with ambushes and superior firepower. In a straight-up fight, the linear tank could down a mobile suit in one hit as long as it got the first shot.

William was still racking his mind, cursing the sabotage of the long-range communications and garrisons of the Second Armoured Corps, when the top hatch of the tank opened, and Corporal Takimi Fujiwara clambered out. William's driver, Takimi had a gift that let him drive as though the tank was a sports car. More than once had he saved their collective lives, a 76mm round impacting mere centimetres from the tank. Takimi loved working his expertise at the wheel, and the team loved watching him save their asses through a hail of rounds, each shot powerful enough to blow a man apart.

"Like what Viggy said, 'Sarge," Takimi replied. "They thought up 18-meter tall bipedal machines to combat us in space, on land, at the air, and at sea. To create a specialized variant for land warfare would not be much of a stretch of one's imagination."

"Are you supposed to be a Natural or are you a secret Coordinator fanboy?" William said irritably, clambering up the tank and jumping onto the top of its turret; Takimi, out of reflex, dodged back into the interior before William could do anything, the half-open hatch closing back with a loud sound. "We've got a goddamned juggernaut of freaks rolling down here, and you're _impressed_ with their fancy space tanks?!"

"It's not admiration, Sarge," came the muffled reply. "I'm just as anxious as facing these unknowns in combat as you are."

"The hell you are, Takky," William replied, stepping off the tank turret. "The less we see of them, the better. Every fight has them using new tricks and cheap moves to win."

"They're outnumbered, Sarge," Gerald replied with a shrug. "If I got dealt a shit hand like that, I'd cheat under the table too." He tapped the side of the tank, where William had carved markings of their kills on the side.

Their last kill had been a bit of a cheap one, or maybe three. A few days ago, faced with a commando mobile suit team at a garrison, William had forced his crew to take the tank and hide behind a dense cluster of rubble as he rigged up the cannon to fire three rapid shots in one go. All the while, the three had to contend with watching the commando team slaughter the garrison; William knew well that their sole advantage lay in getting the first shot off. Simply downing the mobile suits weren't enough; he wanted to do more than just win, he wanted to _live_ through the encounter. They had been lucky enough to escape the notice of the commandos; William wasn't going to, under any circumstances, let them be discovered again.

And so they waited as the slaughter continued, until ten minutes later, the cannon had been hotwired_. God bless Gerald's aiming_, William had thought, as the gunner sent all three rounds straight to where they should be.

"Cheap kills or not," William replied, "We did our duty. Don't forget that we had two squads of tanks there alongside four platoons of men; only forty men and another tank made it back alive." He said as he turned to look at all of them in the eye each. "I don't intend to waste their sacrifice. We've known for a long time that ZAFT's been aiming for Victoria Spaceport; they can't get through the shore defences, our army, _and_ our air and naval forces, and they know it. If it's an invasion via land, they'll only have to contend with our air force and army. And we all know damn well how many men we need to put one of them down. Who knows if their reluctance to play the number games is some kind of farce and they… well… manage to perfect cloning or some shit like that."

"'Sarge," Gerald begun, but couldn't find anything else to say.

"We know, 'Sarge," Takimi cut in. "You're our lovable tank commander, who can't choose between respecting the technological prowess of the Coordinators, or hate them for their arrogance." He jumped off the tank and delivered his heavy-hitter line. "In my country, these people are termed as _tsundere_."

"What the hell's that supposed to mean?" Both William and Gerald said simultaneously.

"It means that 'Sarge's too shy to admit his true feelings," Takimi drawled.

Gerald watched as William chased the younger Takimi all around the tanks in the storage area, and thoughts of the mysterious ZAFT advance disappeared from the minds of all three for that afternoon.

**CE 57 November 16****th****, Unspecified Middle School, Atlantic City, U.S.A., Atlantic Federation**

**Afternoon 13 06**

A youngWilliam grunted as he slammed against the door leading to the emergency staircase and fell through and hit the floor, ending up hidden from view as the door slowly shut. Around him, a group of five children crowded around; some were laughing at him, others sneering. Behind them, a girl, his childhood friend, cowered.

"I thought we told you to stay away from Lily," the lead boy said, leaning in close. William could see each and every one of his teeth as the boy's lips parted in a mocking smile.

Lily winced, a single tear rolling down her cheek.

"She's my friend," William said. "Why should I leave here alone?!"

A kick to his shin answered him. "Heh," another boy remarked. "Darn Natural doesn't understand what we're trying to tell him!"

"Hey, caveman," another boy said, "We're telling you that since you're a Natural, you should stay away from anyone who's not!"

"My mommy said that Naturals were stupid compared to us anyways," another boy replied. "If you stay too close, you'll become less smart. Like them."

The lead boy placed his hand on Lily's shoulder, the mocking grin still plastered over his face. "Of course, you're going to hang out with us as a fellow Coordinator, right?"

Lily froze.

"Yeah, come on," another boy said, "We gotta go pay a visit to that Raydar dude in class B-3…"

"It's 'Reidr'," another boy said, laughing. "Alan Reidr, you know, the guy who got a perfect score for the mathematics surprise test."

The group of boys laughed again as William grimaced and held his shin. Just because his childhood friend was born a Coordinator… just because these group of kids decided that they were superior to others and went on to form their own little gang…!

Just because he was a Natural… just because she was a Coordinator!

_Just because they were Coordinators!_

William shouted in fury, and rising from the ground, tackled the nearest boy to the side, sending them both down the staircase.

**CE 70 May 30****th****, El Alamein, Egypt, OMNI EUROCOM 2****nd**** Armoured Corps Alpha Base **

**Morning 04 32**

Even as William's body reacted to the siren blaring throughout Alpha Base's compound and he shot upright in bed, the words of his past still echoed inside his mind. _Suspension_, the wavering voice echoed. _Violence against fellow students_, it continued as William slipped into his boots. _I hope you've learnt your lesson, William,_ the voice said in one last attempt at a gut-punch, as William stepped into his fatigues and threw his shirt over his body.

_Lily getting bullied by her former friends, many of them Naturals._ William looked on in his memories, watching from the side, as she opened her locker, with an entire dustbin's worth of crumpled notes, hateful messages scrawled on them, tumbling out onto the ground.

_Lily looking back a month later as she met William one last time, when she was about to move to the PLANTS. _He couldn't read her expression; was it sorrow? Regret? At what? At being his friend? Or at the loss of their friendship? _Her parents quickly hustled her off, as though he was a contagion to their daughter._

He had written to her, emailed her, and tried long-distance calls. Only once had he ever got a reply; it was a reply from her mother, and it was a terse message to cease his efforts.

The memories stopped there. Grabbing his helmet, he made straight for the bunk door. Behind him followed Gerald and Takimi, each already in their full battle dress. All around them, other men were in differing states of dress, their minds still half-asleep, and their limbs and body moving hurriedly only to muscle memory of days spent participating in midnight sudden-attack drills.

"-repeat, this is not a drill," a gruff voice that William recognized as belonging to the general in command of this entire area sounded out from the speakers. "This installation is currently under attack by ZAFT ground and aerial forces; our units are currently engaging them as we speak." There was a loud crash and a pause, and the voice continued. "All available men are to report to their combat stations immediately. I repeat, this is not a drill…"

"What in the blasted hell is this din," Gerald said, trying to make himself heard over the loud alarms and jamming his helmet on at the same time, as men dashed through the corridors of the base, hurrying to their stations. "Bloody patchworks couldn't have picked a better time to attack!"

"Logic dictates that an enemy would attack at our most vulnerable phase," Takimi replied, stifling a yawn and adjusting his armoured vest as the three ran to their stations. "That would be at the break of dawn, when most of our men are not quite awake, and our guards are feeling the full effects of their fatigue-"

"Can it, Takky," William growled as he strode into Hangar C-12, one of four cavernous complexes where they kept tanks currently not in active use by the Second Tank Corps. "They're here, and we're going to punch them full of holes. That's all there is to that."

As men rushed to their vehicles, and the roar of engines filled the gigantic interior of the hangar, the three approached their tank at a brisk run; Takimi went in first, easily slipping his smaller build into the driver's seat, while Gerald eased in beside him on the gunner seat.

William slammed into the commander's seat behind the both of them, and pulled the hatch close after him; the sound levels dropped, briefly enveloping the three of them in a state of pseudo-silence. "Start tank!" He shouted, pulling out a control panel and running checks on the tank's various sub-systems.

"Tank starting up," Takimi said, as a low rumble permeated the interior of the vehicle. "All treads at full functionality, hybrid engine system is all green and running hot." He flipped a few more switches, his frontal control panels lighting up. "Battery check, cooling block check, fuel levels check. This linear tank is ready to go."

"Main gun and all gun radar arrays at full functionality," Gerald replied. "Railgun capacitators at one-hundred percent, spare firing coils one through six are on standby." Gerald looked to the side panels. "Gun cooling unit check, full ammunition for the linear cannon, autoloader functionality check. We're ready to blow shit up!"

"Electronics all functioning," William said. "Inter-systems link and remote fire synch system in full operation, comms ready; air recycler running at ninety-percent efficiency. We're ready to rumble, gentlemen. Valor-2 is go!"

The tank rumbled to life as the unit in front of it rumbled out of the hangar. Takimi engaged the tank, and the machine rolled out into the open ground of Alpha Base. From the viewscreen, William could see distant flashes; other tank squads had engaged the enemy in combat.

William keyed in a radio link to the company's control room liaison officer, a Major Rahabinod Ravinan. "Valor-2 to Chamber! What's the enemy headcount?"

The reply was swift, but did little to ease his worries. "Chamber here. They've got few dozen mobile suits of different make," Rahabinod replied. "Some ZuOOTs on the front taking all the fire, and some GINNs in the back slinging rockets and some artillery at us. They started the attack with some heavy carpet bombing on the base outskirts with DINNs and Infestus strike fighters; the flyboys shot some of them down, but the return fire took their toll too. Watch out for air attacks."

"Carpet bombing?" William asked. Even in the darkness of night, he could make out a Diamond Mk. IV 40mm anti-air turret to his side, tracking something in the sky. "But the base defences are still online!" He flipped open the tank's top hatch, taking the chance to look at the dark sky; far overhead, William could see the bright flare of jet engines and flashes indicating missile explosions.

"Not the base," Rahabinod answered. "It was for the field. How the hell else do you think we haven't sent them all to hell over twenty-five kilometres of open ground?! All level terrain's been shot to hell." There was a short pause, and Rahabinod continued. "Still, apart from the bombing there seems to be nothing that seems to be out of place of a standard ZAFT ground attack. Keep your eyes peeled, Valor-2."

"Yes sir," William said, as the tank rolled past an automated railgun turret firing at a distant target. _Dammit_, he thought, as he slammed the hatch shut and disconnected the active link. _ZAFT knew that they would get cut down, so they made the ground into cover to facilitate their movement_. Ground power was one of the sole remaining advantages OMNI could be sure of; with air battles, sometimes they won, and sometimes they lost. William was hoping that the Coordinators were actually stupid and arrogant enough to charge through open ground.

But what really worried William was a lack of surprises. Having fought ZAFT ground troops many times, he knew that the current force wasn't enough to induce the total wipeout that had occurred in Israel.

William shook his head to clear his thoughts and concentrate on commanding the tank. _If it comes, it comes._ Changing channels, he added his company's frequency into the comms' active set. "Valor-2 to all Valor, respond."

"Valor-1 to Valor-2, we're located west of your current heading and are engaged in a defensive action. Proceed there with all due speed."

"Valor-2 received, roger that. Takimi, get us to Alpha Point.," William said, as he pulled out a tactical digital map on the commander's viewscreen and marked a point on a map right beside two other linear tanks. On Takimi's navigation screen, the waypoint appeared.

Takimi put the linear tank in a tight swerve as it dodged a large round. William felt the tank tip a little to the left as it manoeuvred around the crater, all the while maintaining close to its top speed of 95 kilometres per hour. "This might be a bit rough, 'Sarge. We're entering the crater zone of the battlefield," Takimi said, using the slang term to describe the empty space in-between two opposing ground forces.

"That's what we'll do, Takky," William said, surveying the IFF tags, studying the location of both friendly and enemy forces. Under any other circumstances, the interior of the tank would have been stuffy, but the influence of adrenaline from the rude morning awakening had William feeling that there was just too much space. "They've got to content with three GINNs and one ZuOOT; we better help them out before we have to deal with the four, solo."

"Hold on to your helmets, there's a large one ahead," Takimi said, as the tank continued towards Alpha Point. Another explosion, this one half a metre away, rocked the tank, as it entered a crater. William, his stomach vanishing for a moment before the tank leveled out again, could hear the soft clatter of dirt and rocks on the hull of the vehicle.

He quickly engaged the radar, and the tank immediately begun an active search for targets in an eight-hundred metre radius. Normally he would have a larger search range, or even aerial spotters for help, but at night and while moving at top speed, it was impossible for the tank to spare any more power for its radar, and that wasn't even counting battlefield-levels of N-Jammer signal interference. And William very much doubled that there were any air assets free to aid the ground forces at this moment.

The radar bleeped, identifying a target and placing its location on William's display as it surged over the rim of the crater. "Forty degrees to the left, Viggy!" William said, even as he placed the target's location on Gerald's screen. "It's a ZuOOT; one of the big dipshits managed to creep up close!"

"I've got it, 'Sarge!" Gerald said as he tracked the ZuOOT hiding in the bomb-made crater just slightly less than a kilometre away; the ZuOOT turned ponderously, but it only needed one chance to put them out of commission, and unlike the Linear Tank, it carried an almost obscene number of heavy guns; accuracy for key components of the Linear Tank was not its primary concern. "Sooner, if Takky stops his delusions of being on a Daytona track!"

"I'm trying to save our hides here, Viggy, I'd appreciate it…" Takimi grunted, as a fresh wave of bombardment from ZAFT's rear lines commenced, and he zig-zagged the tank at top speed around falling shells. "… If you'd behave like the ace shooter you have wet dreams about!"

One shell that William could have sworn was from a Cattus 500mm rifle landed within arm's length of the tank, covering their unit in a shower of sand. William felt that impact in his bones; if Takimi had been a second later in his actions, all three of them would have been dead in god knows how many thousands of meaty little pieces, not counting the tank.

"I _AM _that ace shooter that I have wet dreams about!" Gerald shouted as he fired the cannon; the loud metallic report of the linear gun's firing rails echoed throughout the tank cockpit, temporarily drowning out all other noises as the gun's systems accelerated a finned 152mm armour-piercing dart of titanium alloy to nearly ten times the speed of sound, sending the deadly projectile towards its target; the side of the ZuOOT, where its armour was less likely to resist or deflect the round.

Gerald was silent as he watched the round, and cheered as the ZuOOT slumped down, a smoking hole in the side of its torso block, and was rewarded with an explosion seconds later, scattering parts in a shower of debris. "And no, I don't have wet dreams about myself! What the fucking hell are you trying to imply here, Takky!?"

"Nothing much, really," Takimi drawled as the tank continued to speed forward, going over the lip of a medium-sized bomb crater as though it were a jump slope. The tank hit the far side of the crater, and for a brief moment its treads scrambled for purchase, kicking up enormous clouds of dust.

The tank shot over the edge of the crater, bringing them face-to-face with a GINN OCHER that had just ended its boost jump, leg thrusters still smoking.

As though in slow motion, William saw the GINN's mooneye turn to track them, and its right arm twisted to aim its rifle. He heard Gerald scream something, and he saw out of the corner of his eye Takimi desperately handling the controls. He felt time slow to a crawl, almost stopping; he barely heard himself shouting the order to fire.

Then the moment passed. The linear gun flashed again, and the round burst forth, shedding its covering as the titanium dart sped forward to hit the GINN squarely in its right, throwing it onto its left side. The GINN toppled, rifle firing into the air, and one round flashed past the tank to impact the far end of the crater. A solid blow, but the tank hadn't had enough time to charge its guns yet, and the round hadn't hit with enough force to do anything more than inflict moderate damage to the GINN's interior components.

"Full stop, charge gun!" William screamed.

"Full stop!" Takimi yelled and punched the brakes. The tank came to an abrupt halt, its rear treads hanging off the lip of the crater's edge. Gerald watched the cannon status display as the engine rerouted power to the capacitators, which rapidly refilled. "Gun ready!"

The GINN was struggling to get up when a second titanium dart smashed through the exact same spot, crushing the components within; a brief flashing shadow on the mobile suit's left arm told William that the round achieved total penetration, and had exited from the other side. The GINN fell back onto its left, for good this time, with a crash, its mooneye dark.

William told Gerald to put one more round into the GINN, for good measure. Light glinted off the tank's dusty hull as it revved up and sped off, the GINN's explosion framing its back.

**CE 70 May 30****th****, Several miles south of El Alamein, Egypt, ZAFT Field Command**

**Morning 05 57**

Andrew Watfeld, ZAFT's Desert Tiger, watched the IFF tags of the ZAFT units on the tactical map as he took a sip out of the steel cup in his hand. Having joined up with another commander, Marwin Autor, whose forces had been inserted via submarine into Yemen and pushed upwards towards Suez , the two assumed joint command of the ZAFT push towards Victoria Spaceport via an overland route through Africa.

Or at least, that was what Andrew had hoped. Seated in front of him was Marwin, and as it was getting increasingly evident, the ZAFT commander was not as proficient as Andrew had hoped.

As he watched the man direct his forces towards OMNI's El Alamein base, he turned to his aide, DaCosta, and whispered to the man. "Why in blazes are we still here and not alongside them?"

DaCosta whispered back. "Commander Autor is a graduate of ZAFT Command Academy," he said. "Just be a bit more patient, Commander. He's ordered that his forces, and only his, participate in combat."

Andrew gritted his teeth. How could he be patient in the presence of a man whose command was comprised of behind-the-line artillery and support units, and who was also throwing said troops against frontline OMNI forces like an old-style cavalry battle?

As though reading his frustrated thoughts, DaCosta whispered again. "Well, he did think of cratering the flat land with munitions to facilitate the advance of his troops-"

"A waste of ammunition," Andrew cut off his subordinate mid-sentence. "This is hostile territory; we shouldn't expect a steady supply line. And now that the OMNI forces have turned it against him…"

DaCosta merely nodded. "I feel the same, Commander. Unfortunately, ZAFT has given overall command to Commander Autor."

"I know," Andrew replied irritably, draining what remained of his coffee. "I also know that his father is a minor PLANT Council member, the shameless cheating bastard." He set the cup down. "Call me back when he's ready to beg for help."

Andrew quickly strode off before he could lose his cool in front of DaCosta, Marwin, and all the aides present. Desert Tiger he may be, as some in his forces were already calling him, but his style of combat was fast, brutal, quick and decisive. He had no stomach for drawn-out battles of attrition or fanciful tactics, unlike Marwin.

He turned to look as Aisha emerged from a nearby tent. His longtime companion, the two were had taken an interest in each other during their younger days, and that interest had continued throughout their stint in the pilot academy, then during the days of hectic combat that had followed since the start of the Bloody Valentine War. Andrew had to pull a lot of strings just to get her by his side again.

"Feeling restless?" Aisha asked. Like Andrew, she was fully dressed in field gear. Despite being a pilot, Andrew had no unit for her; his BuCUEs were all taken and his own custom unit was a single-seater. This, despite Aisha being fully trained as a pilot, irked Andrew the most. He felt like he was sidelining her.

"Perhaps," Andrew said, as Aisha drew close. He let himself relax slightly as Aisha's reassuring grip touched upon his shoulders. "Marwin may be enthusiastic, but he knows little about actual ground combat against OMN's tank corps, especially those from the vaunted Eurasian Federation units. At this rate, his artillery units are going to get eaten alive."

"I'm sure he will see his mistake soon enough," Aisha said, her hands working their magic as she slowly massaged Andrew's taut shoulders. Running command had been tiring work for the newly-minted ZAFT commander for the past few weeks, and Andrew could feel his body loosening as he let himself relax further.

"Perhaps," Andrew replied, taking in a slow, deep breath. The cool desert air chilled his lungs, but it also helped him to wrest his mind from the anger that threatened to blind him. He felt in control of his own thoughts once again. "He is still a commander, and I would not like to see him lose. Not to mention the loss of his artillery units would be quite the blow."

Aisha was about to continue when Andrew's comm unit crackled to life. "This is DaCosta," the voice filtered through. "Commander Autor is requesting that you send your BuCUE contingent to assist him in taking the El Alamein base."

Andrew tapped the comm unit once. "I'm on my way to the command centre. I'll help him, but we need a little change of plans." He turned towards Aisha, and brushed her fringe away. "Sorry, Aisha. Duty calls," he said, planting a light kiss on her forehead.

"Then go," she said, watching Andrew walk off. "Time waits for no man… nor beast."

**CE 70 May 30****th****, El Alamein, Egypt, OMNI EUROCOM 2****nd**** Armoured Corps Alpha Base Outskirts**

**Morning 06 49**

William watched his tactical viewscreen as the ZAFT IFF signals continued to backtrack across the map. Having joined up with two tanks of Valor Company, his parent unit, the three had held the area against three pushes by ZAFT ZuOOTs, and even two overambitious GINN OCHER pilots, as they tried to get past the area to hit at one of Alpha Base's less-defended entrances.

So far, William and his crew had claimed another GINN. In the meantime, their position had been reinforced by most of Valor Company, and the formation of sixteen vehicles, not counting other light vehicles and infantry that had joined up, continued to hide just right behind the lip of the crater, preventing any mobile suits from taking shots at them.

Taking a sip of water out of a sealed bottle, William tried to ignore the explosions going off around them. The ZAFT forces were shelling anywhere they liked as they retreated, and William didn't want to be caught out in the open on the off-chance that a stray round managed to hit the tank.

Still, it irked William. This battle had shown that even while outnumbered, ZAFT could keep the pressure on them. He'd spent the last two hours listening to orders flying around and the death screams of other people; reports were still sketchy, but William estimated that the ZAFT forces had lost twenty mobile suits, give or take five or so, in stark contrast to the Second Armoured Corps' fifty-over losses.

"Is is over?" Gerald asked, peering at the field through the digital sighting screen. "Can't see worth a shit with all this fog and smoke."

"Keep your finger ready, Viggy," William said, even as he tried to raise a comm link to the base. N-Jammer interference had gotten worse within the past hour, and William was as sure as he breathed that this was a prelude to some new move ZAFT had up its stinking space sleeve. "We don't know what they're up to."

"Maybe they think their losses are too heavy," Takimi said, his grip on the steering mechanism tight. "Low numbers."

William snorted. "Victoria sure didn't seem that way."

"We brought them down a couple of rungs on the ego ladder back in Victoria," Takimi said. "I'm sure they'll be a bit more cautious in land combat."

"Well, I damn well hope-" a beeping sound cut off William, and he opened the comm link. "This is Valor-2" he said.

Valor-1's voice was breathless at the other end. "All units, get moving!"

"What?"

"A ZAFT armoured formation is rolling in! Something that we've got next to no intel on!" Valor-1's tone was urgent. "There are three formations; they've crushed the opposition at Bravo and Charlie Points! Get back into the town or Alpha Base; your current location is too exposed!"

"Impossible!" William's mind refused to accept Rahabinod's words, even as he frantically keyed in a system link to the other tanks in the vicinity and hurriedly motioned for Takimi to start the tank's engines. "They had two full battalions at Charlie Point, and the 16th Artillery Brigade alongside another battalion at Bravo Point as well!"

"Fact is they're gone," Valor-1 said. "Our orders are to pull back to El Alamein with ef-"

William's blood ran cold when the link to Valor-1 suddenly erupted in static that marred mostof Valor-1's next words. It could only mean that N-Jammer levels had reached their maximum, a state only achieved in close proximity of a ZAFT mobile weapon, which could replicate the effect on a smaller scale with their ECM packages, or from one of the orbital units ZAFT had seeded into the ground.

As far as William could remember, there weren't any orbital-dropped Jammers located near El Alamein. That could only mean one other thing.

William heard Takimi exclaim something, and focused his sight on the forward screen. Charging in from the front and sides were machines that William had never seen before; blue-coloured, four-treaded tanks, some with missile launchers, and others with what seemed to be gigantic twin linear cannons. In front of all of them was the customary mono-eye of ZAFT mobile units. Leading the formation was one of them equipped with a missile launcher, but painted yellow, and with odd spikes jutting out from places.

As they closed the distance William realized just how fast they were; significantly faster than the Linear Tank, William estimated their speed to be at least one-hundred and ten kilometres per hour.

_If this was what they lured out most of the tanks from the base and El Alamein for_, William thought, _then it was working_. "Fire!"

"Main gun firing!" Gerald shouted as the linear cannon loosed its round. "Fuck! They used the GINNs and ZuOOTs from before to lure us out here-_for this_!"

To the shock of everyone on board William's tank, the round plunged harmlessly into the ground as their target effortlessly swerved to the side to avoid the shot, managing to drift over the uneven ground, before moving back into formation. Clouds of dust erupted as the other tanks achieved similar results, with only one of them scoring a glancing hit on one of the machines as they approached, easily navigating the edges of the craters.

Then they were all over the OMNI tanks. Gerald screamed as one of the ZAFT machines jumped right over their tank, a gigantic shadow covering all of them. William himself was dumbstruck as he realized that the main frame of the ZAFT tank was quite high. The titanic monster landed right behind them; turning faster to face their rear than he expected, it let loose a flurry of rockets.

"Takky!" William roared. "Punch it!"

Takimi didn't reply, but he immediately slammed the throttle forward. Their tank shot out and over the edge of the crater, rear launchers flinging flares into the air, as a rocket impacted into the dirt where they had been moments ago and exploded, showing the tank with sand and dirt. Other tanks were not so lucky as the other rockets found their mark, and William watched as the IFF of five tanks vanished; Valor-1's tank was one of them.

"Dammit!" William screamed. "Viggy! Puncture this one, and be quick about it!"

"Don't need to tell me twice, 'Sarge!" Gerald yelled as he brought the linear gun to bear on the monstrosity. Another rumble, and the titanium dart sped straight at the ZAFT tank.

The machine effortlessly _lifted_ itself up from the ground, its treads folding back into what William could now see as its _legs_. The linear cannon round, originally meant for the machine's midsection, impacted into the ground with a spray of dust, leaving the ZAFT unit untouched. _Now I know why these so-called "ZAFT tanks" are so high, _a thought cut into William's mind,_ it's to support their legs_.

_And now I know why they swept the Second Armoured Corps under the rug like nothing, _the voice at the back of William's mind continued in what he imagined was a shrill, hysterical voice that would have been comical given any other situation, _this isn't a bloody tank, it's another of their god-damned specialized motherfucking Mobile Suits!_

Whatever else William wanted to say out loud about the ZAFT machines then was lost in the sound of his own frantic shout, as he screamed for Takimi to get them out of the place. The tank rumbled, and he heard Gerald yell again as another of the ZAFT machines landed within arm's reach of their tank. _Did it just try to pin us down? _William thought.

The ZAFT vehicle-_The beast_, William's subconscious corrected himself, turned to face the tank, its mono-eye flaring menacingly. Falling back onto its treads, the ZAFT machine turned on the spot, and twin lightning flashes erupted from the two railguns mounted on its back as it revved its treads, going from zero to what William wagered was a solid seventy kilometres per hour within three seconds.

The rounds went wide as Takimi swerved to the side, putting the ZAFT machine on their rearward right, but the ZAFT machine's larger size meant that it could carry larger rounds. Even with the rumble of the tank and the background vibrations of the battlefield, he could feel the twin impacts of the rounds. And he didn't like it.

"Viggy!" William shouted. "Put one in its eye; anything to keep that dipshit off our backs!"

Gerald grunted as he wrestled with the gun controls, struggling to just simply keep a lock on the machine, as Takimi continued to dance the tank through a second wave of railgun fire. Beside them, another tank exploded as a railgun round tore through its back, its broken barrel spinning through the air.

"Just…" Gerald hissed through clenched teeth. "A… bit… more…"

"I'll give you one second to shoot," Takimi breathlessly replied, even as he pushed the tank to the limit, and it roared through a cloud of dust thrown up by an impacting round right in front of them. "I can't guarantee anything beyond that!"

Takimi slowed the tank down just slightly, even as Gerald angled the gun to face the pursuing ZAFT machine dead centre. William saw electricity arc around its twin railguns.

"Fire!"

"Round away!" Gerald yelled as the linear tank let loose its titanium dart, accelerated to ten times the speed of sound. The shot hit the ZAFT machine squarely in the eye, and William could see small explosions chain themselves all the way through its "head" and "neck". The machine slowed down, and the electricity around its railguns eased off, but it didn't stop moving.

"That was at fifty-percent power!" Gerald screamed. "I need another second!"

"That's enough!" William shouted, as another backtracking tank beside them flattened from the impact of one of the ZAFT machines landing on it. Thankfully, it went off to chase another target instead of William and his crew. "Takky, get us _the fuck out of here_!"

"You got it S-" Takimi begun.

He never finished his sentence. William saw everything happen in a flash; the lead unit that he saw, one of the ZAFT machines coloured bright orange, jumped in from the right, blocking their path.

Time stopped. William could clearly see now; it had fangs and claws attached to its legs, and the emblem of a tiger was painted on the right of the machine's right forelimb.

It resembled a tiger, a gigantic, mono-eyed tiger, more than it resembled a mobile suit. William fancied that he saw machine oil drip from its fangs, and its claws were stained with engine coolant, petrol, and god knew what else.

Then everything ended as the machine batted the tank aside with one blow. William gritted his teeth as the OMNI heavy vehicle flew up and through the air as though it were made of plastic, turning over and over again. He saw Takimi get dislodged from his seat and gasped as a boot, probably William's own, smashed into his face, breaking his nose.

The tank hit the ground. There was the sound of an explosion, then a shower of sparks. He thought he heard Gerald scream.

The second impact. William heard the sound of a sickening crack. Another impact. A shrill alarm indicated that they just lost all functionality of the linear cannon. Then another impact. Pieces of internal frame and metal splinters flung themselves all over inside the tank, a deadly maelstrom of debris from the repeated high-impact damages. Something smashed into his legs, hard enough for him to black out for a moment.

William felt himself fly off the command chair as the seatbelt snapped, and head-first into the top hatch of the tank. A burst of stars, even through his helmet, a brief screech of metal that temporarily deafened him, and the sensation of hot flames all rolled into one feeling of massive discomfort as the tank stopped rolling.

William turned towards the back of the tank, but at the sight of fire he recoiled. He turned and reached for the top hatch's emergency release button and hit it with all the strength he could muster. The tank hatch popped open, and William, who had been leaning on it, crawled out, fell a distance onto the sandy ground. The tank was propped up against a rock; had that not happened, William would have died from suffocation in an overturned tank.

"Viggy?" He turned back and said in a hoarse voice, even as a corner of his mind told him that his legs were probably broken. "Takky?"

There was no answer. William grunted, ignoring the burning pain in his lungs, and crawled towards the tank, slowing propping himself up and against the rock, and hauled his screaming body halfway back up through the hatch. He lasted a second before falling down again, but it was all he needed to see what had happened.

Gerald was hanging over the gunner seat, his face burnt beyond recognition and the control panels in front of him a charred mess. His left side was showered with debris, and William saw a half-foot-long metal piece stuck into his neck.

Takimi had ended up in the commander's seat, his face a bloody mess. William could see that his left arm and right leg were broken.

William hauled himself back up, this time managing to hang on without too using up too much of whatever strength remained in his body. He pulled on the command chair, but then Takimi's body pitched forward, and he saw the bloody wound in his back, over his spine. _Probably hit something jutting out_, the pragmatic side of William said, even as he looked around the interior of the tank frantically and saw the left side, mangled, and with one particular piece of metal sticking out and coated with blood.

There was nothing left to do but save himself.

**CE 70 May 30****th****, El Alamein, Egypt, OMNI EUROCOM 2****nd**** Armoured Corps Alpha Base Outskirts**

**Morning 10 31**

Andrew Watfeld got off his TMF/A-802 P-Mod.W BuCUE Waltfeld Custom Type, and felt the solid response of his boots hitting the sun-baked ground. His custom BuCUE had been given to him as a request following his assignment as overall commander of the ZAFT forces pushing towards Victoria Spaceport from Gibraltar, and it had served him well throughout the battles leading up to El Alamein.

The battle had been brutal but swift; Andrew had used the fact that Marwin's attack with slow units had drawn out many of the tanks from OMNI's Alpha Base; the moment his division had taken to the field, the BuCUEs had used their superior speed and firepower to carve up the famed OMNI tank units into pieces. He himself had destroyed nearly three dozen tanks, but for him, it was just par on course in a single battle.

Andrew surveyed the field on foot, walking around the smoking carcasses of tanks. They had taken El Alamein; there was no need to fear anything now. He wanted to walk amongst the carnage, to remind himself of his duty, and the power that had been vested in him.

He rounded a corner, obscured by a large boulder, and chanced upon an OMNI tank crewmember, still alive and leaning against the boulder, seated. The man wheezed as he tried to breathe using damaged lungs. Andrew could see by the way he leaned to one side that he had more than just a few ribs broken; probably both lungs punctured.

The man turned to face Andrew. "Tiger… stripes?"

Andrew kept silent. He had interacted with OMNI officers before, but not one that was on the verge of death. "Heh," the man tried to laugh, but ended up choking instead. Fresh blood bubbled out from the corners of his mouth and down his chin, already encrusted with dry blood. "I… see…"

Andrew couldn't keep silent any longer. "If anything," he said, folding his arms, "That's the first time I saw a tank nail one of my BuCUEs, and while moving, too."

"Doesn't… matter… for shit," the man wheezed. "I…. lost. You know… I've sent… nine of you freaks… to hell…"

Andrew stayed silent. The man turned towards the sky, his eyes glazing over, his hold on reality slipping. "I… wonder how… she's doing… at the PLANTS…" his voice was rapidly becoming softer. "I'd… give an arm… to punch Marwin again… that arrogant assho…"

Andrew watched as the man's head drooped to one side, and reached forward to close the man's eyes. Pulling out the man's dog tags, he took a long look at it.

"Nine, huh?" He said. "Too bad I was your tenth."

The Desert Tiger continued on his solitary walk until a half hour later, when he returned to base. His co-commander, Marwin Autor, was looking over his artillery units.

"Ah, Andrew!" Marwin said the moment he caught side of him. "A splendid display of firepower from both our forces." He had a smile plastered over his face. "At this rate, we'll have Victoria Spaceport in our hands in no time!"

Andrew considered saying something to deflate the man's ego, but thought against it, and settled for as neutral an answer as he could muster. "ZAFT is strong, and our technology is advanced beyond what OMNI has, Commander Autor. We'll end this quickly, and we can have peace again, for those who died at Junius Seven."

The slightest of frowns creased Marwin's face; _perhaps not the ego-boosting answer he wanted_, Andrew thought.

"Of course, Andrew," Marwin replied. "With your quick-strike BuCUEs, and my well-commanded division of GINNs and ZuOOTs taking the front, we'll flatten the outdated Naturals in no time."

_ He doesn't even know he's supposed to take a supporting position_, Andrew thought.

"Say, Commander Autor, do you know of a man," he paused to steel himself, "by the name of William Culhan?"

Marwin looked at Andrew, a frown on his face. "No, I believe not. Is he supposed to be someone of importance?"

Andrew shook his head. "No. Just a passing question." He saluted. "Have a nice day, Commander Autor."

**Afterword:**

_This one is abit of a long chapter, so apologies if you fell asleep halfway through. I still don't think I managed to do El Alamein justice though, what with my hurried attempt in trying to cram the new character's motivations and the entire battle in. As well, sorry if some of the military formation numbers seem messed up (I've no idea how many tanks a tank corps has, derp) and more importantly, sorry for taking a two-month long hiatus before this latest update. I got hit with compulsory military enlistment and training for the next two years (happens to just about every male in my country), so time's a bit tight. Optimistically, I should be able to finish the next chapter… maybe by January 2012? Har har… _

_Also, if the language seems a bit rough, I tried to use that to reflect the viewpoint from soldiers on the ground. _

_Anyways, this particular event in SEED history is known as the Battle of Suez, where ZAFT ground forces defeated a massive Earth Alliance tank corps at El Alamein on the 25__th__ of May, CE 70, and Andrew Waltfeld earns the nickname "Desert Tiger" for his exploits in this battle. After this battle, the ZAFT forces begin heading south, expanding their territory into Africa, and leading up to their capture of the Victoria Spaceport. This is directly linked with the Casablanca Sea Battle in Chapter 3 of this fic series; that battle was to establish a beachhead at the south of Europe (what would eventually become ZAFT's Gibraltar base) and invade Victoria Spaceport by land. A bit of a long journey, but the series never gave a reason why, so I've used this chapter to explain OMNI having formidable fixed defences there (albeit facing the wrong way in this instance, like what happened to Singapore in WWII.)_

_I changed things around a bit; Watfeld already has his custom BuCUE by this battle, although he's not explicitly referred to as the "Desert Tiger" by anyone; in-series he's known by that title because of his overall achievements, so I've taken that into account. FYI, the entry for the Battle of Suez lists Andrew as earning his title there and is the only entry that does so, so I'm less inclined to use it here. You see him with DaCosta and Aisha already; that one too is something I took liberty with, considering that the former's his right hand man and the latter his trusted confidant and lover. Also, regarding how the battle went, we've got no indication of how. Did they attempt a landing on the shores of El Alamein facing the Mediterranean Sea? Or did they go by land, through the Middle East? I've went with the second option to give the conflict a bit of foreboding, but I've no idea if the former might have been better. _

_Regarding mechanics, considering that Andrew's other ride, his LaGOWE, was said to be developed from a combination of data from Andrew's custom BuCUE and beam weapons technology from the stolen Alliance GUNDAMs, it only makes sense for me to put him in his custom unit in this battle, since there was no record that he piloted a vanilla BuCUE for any extended period of time prior to the series. Of course, I could use this battle to establish Andrew finding a need for close-quarter weapons on a normal BuCUE, but that's alternative way of writing, not a correction._


	7. Chapter 7: Justification

_Author's Note:_

_This fanfic is to write upon some of the events in Gundam SEED and SEED Destiny that are not touched upon or mentioned in-series, but their dates are listed on GundamWikia and are thus treated as part of canon. They are therefore based upon actual happenings in the Cosmic Era universe, but the events within them are open to interpretation. This fanfic is also an attempt at showcasing a "what-if" of all sides involved in the wars, and how some of the events within the show might have come to be._

**Gundam SEED: Tales of the Cosmic Era**

**Chapter 7: Justification**

**CE 70 February 16th, OMNI ALANTICOM, Washington D.C., Atlantic Federation**

**Morning 08 22**

"Sir?"

The colonel shifted uncomfortably in his uniform as he eyed the file on the table nervously. In front of him, a lieutenant-general sat, hands locked together, with an expectant look on his face. Sunlight shone in through the window and onto the rank insignia of the colonel's collar, one broad yellow bands ending in two blue tabs.

"I do not take kindly to repeating orders," the general said. "You will be in charge of coordinating the 317th Paratrooper Battalion's efforts to take Panama Spaceport. I've already notified the necessary personnel, and you will have ample support from the 113rd Tactical Fighter Group, 72nd Attack Group, and the 186th Armored Strike Battalion. Naval support will come in the form of Task Force Battle-Axe; with three assault ships and a score or more of combat vessels, this should be easy for you. The file will have more precise details on what you need to do. Once you're done, report back to me, and we can begin this operation."

The colonel bit his lower lip, took a deep breath, and replied. "Sir, we have no reason to take Panama Spaceport. The United States of South America is an ally state."

"Are they, now?" the general turned his seat so that the back of the chair faced the junior officer. "Colonel, our trade activities with them are important," the general stood up, "but not as important as to overlook the fact that they're all to ready to do business, or even more than just that, with that upstart nation in space. We have many holdings in the USSA as well, colonel. This is an act of protection, to make sure that they don't gain a global strike and coordination capability against us and our allies, or provide any more advantages to ZAFT than they already have done."

The colonel gulped. "I understand, sir." He picked up the file and leafed through the interior, noting some of the more major details on the documents. His eyes widened as he read through the entire thing. "General…" the colonel said, trying to keep his voice as level as possible as he lowered the document. "General, what is the meaning of this? This… this is an annexing operation, not one to secure our assets-"

The general arched an eyebrow, turning around to silence the colonel with a glare. "Exactly as it says, Colonel. After all, we were the ones who helped them build the thing." His eyes narrowed. "Is there a problem?"

The colonel gulped. "No, sir. I'll see to it that the attack force is ready to move out by the 19th of February." With the slightest of nods, he exited the office.

The lieutenant general-gave a long sigh and sat back into his chair. "What an ignorant man, to not understand the need for us to destroy ZAFT." He looked towards the sky. "May the goddess of victory grant us, the Blue Cosmos, the power of justice against those monsters," he spat vehemently.

**CE 70 February 19th, Panama Spaceport, Brazil, United States of South America**

**Morning 07 00**

A young boy watched from the slums as the large planes flew overhead, escorted by dozens of smaller ones. Even for the Cosmic Era, areas where rapid development took place tended to push the existing slums of a city to a corner, rather than get rid of them in favour of proper housing for the displaced citizens. The city of Panama, of the state of the same name, was but a less severe case of this.

The object causing the displacement was the Porta Panama Mass Driver, used by both the USA and the USSA to send goods and materials up into space. The place was also an important commerce point and had a great deal of sophisticated infrastructure built around it to support the mass driver's power requirements, turning the mid-sized city into the first-class, bustling trade centre it was today. The local government, however, was too busy managing the city to give much thought to the poor living in Panama, and so the slums remained.

Passengers from all walks of life were waiting in the massive halls of the Panama Spaceport, either having just disembarked from one of the massive re-entry shuttle transports from the various artificial colonies in orbit around the Earth, or were from the lunar cities. Others were awaiting their turn to go up to space, be it by mass driver, or conventional shuttle. The spaceport was teeming with activity, with smaller flights landing and taking off at the Porta Panama Airport, which located next to the spaceport. Each aircraft was yet more passengers, and even as a large shuttle landed, a freight capsule ran the length of the mass driver, shooting into space and leaving a trail of exhaust stretching into the sky.

Regardless, all turned to watch as several massive planes landed in the midst of the spaceport, occupying nearly all the airstrips; the smarter and more observant passengers noted, some with a great deal of worry, that the aircraft were troop transports, and bore the mark of the Atlantic Federation Air Force and OMNI. F-7D Spearhead fighters roared through the skies overhead, some turning to chase after flights in the air in order to force them down or chase them away, and others circling around the massive complex that housed the airstrips and the Porta Panama mass driver itself.

Fianna Alshyre gripped her bag tightly as she watched soldiers stream from the transports. News of the flaring relationship between the Atlantic Federation and ZAFT had forced each side to adopt policies that were increasingly hardliner, and just a week ago her nation has announced its intention to continue open trade with ZAFT, despite the threats from the Atlantic Federation, and OMNI by large, that to do so would be to do trade with a recognized enemy in wartime.

The soldiers were quick and efficient, and the people in the Porta Panama spaceport were helpless to oppose them. Killing the few security troopers who had dared opposed them without breaking their advance, the soldiers, some paratroopers, some from the normal infantry, and even squads of commandos stormed through the complex, overwhelming all locations.

Soon, the Panama Spaceport was cut off from all access, and its control room was taken. With the power supply to the mass driver cut, the freight capsule that was half-deployed on its rails ceased moving, stuck halfway out of the launch bay.

Within the next hour, the troops had herded the civilians and spaceport workers into designated waiting areas and forced them to sit; from the floor, some kept a silent prayer going, while others took whatever chance they could get to glare at the turned back of an OMNI soldier.

Fianna, having been led into a lobby overlooking the shuttle runways, was one of the luckier ones to get a space in a corner, with a wall to lean against. In the mad rush to get into the waiting area, she had chanced upon an elderly man who had fallen and sprained his ankle, and now she tended to him, slowly taking off his left shoe. She was no medical genius, but she had ample training as a nurse and knew how to tend to a sprain-that is, if the OMNI soldiers would just allow her to leave to get the ice she needed from a nearby shop.

Fianna gingerly eased the old man's foot out of his shoe, and a small sigh of pain escaped his lips. If the surrounding people noticed it, they made no sign; some remained huddled with knees up to their chests and staring blankly into the centre crowd, others had fallen asleep, or were pretending to. "Hurts like nothing," he said. "You should get some rest or tend to your own matters, lady."

"It's okay," Fianna replied, "We can't go anywhere else with these soldiers watching." She leaned back to look up at the female soldier, who had purposely moved in front of her a few minutes ago to send her an unspoken message when Fianna made to stand up: no one moves, no exception.

The woman, sideburns hanging down from what was otherwise a short-cropped head of dark-brown hair, merely arched an eyebrow, before returning to sweeping her gaze across the lobby. Fianna noticed the three blue-with-black-trim chevrons pointing upwards, the OMNI insignia of a sergeant. Her father had been a regular in the USSA military, and more than once had taken her to military fairs where she had ample time to get acquainted with rank details like those.

"Wait," the sergeant said, startling Fianna. "I've already sent someone to find some ice. You just sit down here until we can release this place from lockdown."

"When will that be?" Fianna asked.

The sergeant glanced at Fianna, but did not reply. Fianna noticed that her fingers constantly tapped her rifle's trigger guard.

It was another ten minutes before a trooper returned with a bucket of ice. He all but flung down the bucket beside Fianna, scattering ice all over the carpeted floor, and threw down a dirty-looking rag.

Fianna eyed him, but the trooper spat on the floor. "Damned ingrate." Turning to the female sergeant, he shot her a look of contempt. "The next time there's an errand, tell the old man to suck it and take it like a man, or I'll help him quieten down, my way. Our orders are to shut this place down tight-"

"Shut your top hole, Orson, and get back to your spot," The female sergeant replied, her voice clearing showing her indifference to his complaints. "You have something you need to expel from your overused flap-trap, you can bring it up with me and the CO after we're done with this mission."

The soldier merely scowled and moved off, leaving Fianna to ease the old man's discomfort quietly. She turned to thank the female sergeant and caught a glimpse of her name tag: K. Rassare. The sergeant merely stared back for a while, her piercing blue eyes making Fianna feel uncomfortable.

The silence continued as an hour passed into two, and two to four.

**CE 70 February 19th, Panama Spaceport, Brazil, United States of South America**

**Morning 15 02**

Eight hours had since the start of the lockdown. The soldiers had allowed people to go to the washrooms and to rummage through nearby shops for whatever they could eat, but other than that, no news of what was going on outside filtered in; the soldiers had activated the damage controls early on and shut the emergency blast shutters over the lobby's viewing windows, and the place would have been pitch-dark if not for the roof lighting.

Fianna turned to look as Rassare approached, and waved away the soldier that had previously rotated with her to keep watch over this corner. Like always, she stood in front of Fianna, her gaze occasionally sweeping around the row of people near the wall.

"Excuse me, Miss Rassare," Fianna asked, deciding that her need to know was greater than any possible risk that could happen to her, "But when can we be allowed to leave? I mean, I just feel the need for a tentative time, and …" Fianna's words vanished as Rassare eyed her from the corner of her sight, and Fianna quickly fell silent again. Rassare simple returned to her scanning gaze, treating Fianna as she would any other civilian in the room.

Despite the severity of the situation, Fianna, worn out from worry and the long time spent waiting, was about to fall asleep when the first _boom_ echoed out throughout the waiting hall area. The sound reverberated around the room, and the OMNI soldiers instantly became alert, looking around for the source of the disturbance.

Another _boom_, and Fianna could roughly gauge where the sound was coming from; a few meters away from her was the nearest window, with the side facing the shuttle runways covered with a blast shield.

_ Boom_. As Fianna watched, the heavy-duty steel alloy plate started to dent, forcing cracks into the thick glass of the window. She quickly scrambled to her feet. Apparently Rassare was thinking the same possibility as her, because she got to her feet as well. "Get away from that window!" she shouted.

The steel plate exploded inwards, the shockwave and the shower of thick glass shards flying through the air, shortly followed by several smoke grenades fired through the resultant hole that quickly filled most of the room in white smoke. Fianna was one of those lucky enough to avoid injury from fragments, but the concussion of the blast threw her to the ground and left her gasping for air all the same. Her hearing was filled with nothing but an odd ringing sound; with great effort she felt someone pulling her to her feet. Rassare was shouting something, but Fianna dully shook her head and said that she couldn't hear anything; or at least, she thought she said so. The ringing sound drowned out everything else.

Rassare made a sound of exasperation and dragged Fianna into the nearest corner, just as the first sharp cracks of gunfire started to lance out; from where she stood, the lobby entrances were being swarmed by civilians stampeding to get out, with a fair number of OMNI troopers fighting to get through them and back into the room. Those who were still left quickly took cover as their comrades began to fall. "Orson!" she yelled into her mike unit. "Keith! Vorst!"

"Orson here," a male voice answered back. "Keith's with me; he got a grenade off, but he took a bullet to the knee and can't walk worth a shit. Vorst and a civie who got in his way are having their brains all mixed together on the floor. It looked like a 5.56mm to me."

Setting down the reeling Fianna, Rassare cocked her weapon; the R-441+T3 bullpup submachinegun with range-booster barrel attachment and x2 scope was a powerful, compact weapon issued to squad commanders, and Rassare liked the way the small weapon fitted into the hollow of her shoulder.

She tried to peek out of the corner, but a small explosion of plaster from the wall forced her to duck back into cover by reflex. What she had seen, however, was not reassuring, as the floor was littered with OMNI troopers. "Orson, regardless of where the hell you are now, do you have a clear view of the enemies?"

A staccato burst of gunfire, and Orson answered. "The civies are in a mad stampede; I got rushed out of the lobby." Some yelling, and Orson's voice letting out a particularly elaborate curse, followed by another burst of gunfire. "Got one fucker here who tried to ambush me. Asshole's shoulder patch is from the USSA commando; special forces." Orson paused to yell orders before he continued. "I've linked up with someone from McKenzie's squad; he was near the explosion. He saw outside before being swept out by the civie wave, and according to him our transports are not in a pretty sight."

"Looks like the USSA's military are putting up a good fight," Rassare remarked, as she turned back to Fianna, and saw her looking expectantly at her mike unit. "Orson, try and get back here. I think the room is virtually devoid of OMNI troopers, and I don't think the USSA commandos are going to let me walk out."

"Got it, sergeant," Orson said, snickering. "I'll do my best. I'm on the ground floor, and some bloody faggot just blew up the nearest elevators to the lobby."

"Don't take too long. Fly if you have to." Rassare replied irritably.

"You land on your soil and take control of us like you owned the place, Miss Rassare," Fianna replied the moment Rassare stopped talking, and started to step back. "Of course people would fight back."

"Last I recalled, miss," Rassare said, "All the USSA did was to provide low-wage workers to haul scaffolding, and maybe a specialist or two in more advanced construction. All the technical expertise and precise material working were provided by the Atlantic Federation." She peeked over the corner and sent off a sharp three-round burst, and was immediately answered by a sharp scream as the bullets found their mark.

"I'm not praising the way my nation does things, but your nation is located right beside mine and is handing cash over to ZAFT, letting them turn it into funds to drag out the war." Rassare said. "At least have the decency to hide your dealings if you want to be money-grubbers."

"This isn't our war, Miss Rassare. This isn't the USSA's war," Fianna shook her head in despair, her long locks of dust-covered brown hair waving. "This spat is between you and ZAFT!"

Rassare looked back at Fianna. "Too bad," she said. "I'm not the one running the Atlantic Federation. Suck it up." She tensed her legs and readied a fragmentation grenade, pulling the ring out, but keeping a tight grip on the handle and grenade itself. "If you want to live, I suggest you keep your head low here. Your own special forces are less likely to shoot you than one of my comrades, so you should be fine if you don't move."

"What about you, Miss Rassare?" Fianna asked.

"I've got to go where my duty calls," Rassare replied. "By the way, the name's Kim."

Without waiting for a reply, Kim sent the grenade in a straight throw to where the gunfire continued to lance out through the diminishing smoke. Faint silhouettes could be seen moving around. "Grenade!" she yelled into her mike.

The explosive device tumbled through the air and hit the ground, bounced once and exploded, enveloping the area with a bright flash and metal fragments. Not waiting to see if it did any good, Kim dashed out from under cover. The smoke from the breach had begun to clear, and she saw where the next spot of good cover from which to continue her advance would be; a pillar, where two more soldiers were crouched behind. There was just enough space left for her.

A round whistled past her head, close enough for her to feel the round with the hairs on the back of her neck. She dived, and managed to get most of her body into cover; one mad scramble later and her feet were in as well, a cluster of smoking holes a testament to how well her enemy was fighting in low-visibility conditions.

"You there," she turned to the nearest soldier, who had his headset pressed against his ear. "What's the situation outside?"

"Looks like the USSA decided against being diplomatic this time, and just went and threw everything they could scramble in short order against us," the corporal replied. "By all accounts we seem to be holding our own; our forces have repelled two assaults against the control centre, and four against the power generators. Fighting is widespread but light with our other forces within the Spaceport."

"What about outside?" Kim asked. "We had airdropped tanks and armoured vehicles out there."

"Outside's a different story, sergeant," the corporal replied. "USSA armour is clashing head-on with our own forces. Even our naval support is cornered with half the USSA navy speeding to meet them. Reinforcements are en route, but they're not going to reach just yet."

The other soldier, a private, winced as gunfire peeled chunks of the pillar off. "We're all going to die here," he mumbled, "They're throwing everything at us!"

"No," Kim said. "We're winning. They know that in an all-out assault they'll be crushed, so they're trying to intimidate us and drive us off first." She put her R-441 to firing position. "We'll have to deny them that chance until OMNI can get those reinforcements through."

Peeking out of her cover, she set one eye on her scope; within a second she got her target, a USSA commando taking aim at her. Both soldiers fired at the same time, but the enemy soldier's first round was wide, and Kim's first round ensured that he never got a second chance to adjust his aim.

"Are we breaking through, sergeant?" the corporal asked.

"Damn right we are," Kim said, getting ready to run. "Cover me while I make it there." she pointed to where the metal blast door had landed after the USSA troopers' explosive entrance, the crumpled obstacle being big enough to hide three people easily. A glimpse of the sky could be seen from where she was.

"You got it sergeant," the corporal replied, readying his bulkier A-14A4 assault rifle. Nudging his companion, he hissed at him. "Get your shit together, man!"

The private whimpered, but readied his rifle as well.

"On my mark," Kim said, her legs tense, ready for the burst of speed. "Mark!"

Both corporal and private opened fire, their rounds filling the air with a hail of lead death. Kim sprinted towards the fallen metal door, fully aware that the cover fire wouldn't deter trained special forces troopers one bit.

A lancing pain shot up Kim's leg just as she made it within two metres of the cover; summoning all her strength, she leapt and crashed to the ground just as the shots followed her movement, culminating in a series of metallic reports against the fallen blast door. Sparing her leg a quick glance, she noted the shallow graze, and quashed her impulse to look out through the gap, motioning for the two soldiers to get ready to move.

Propping her R-441 against the metal cover, she focused on her front, and squeezed off single shot after single shot, trying to hit as close to where the enemy might be hiding. The private made it safely, but as he and Kim set down their cover fire, the corporal was hit in the chest.

The soldier went down with a scream of anguish, dropping his rifle and clawing at his chest, blood flowing freely. Cursing, Kim fired and sent an enemy soldier reeling, falling back behind cover from an abdomen wound as the private scrambled to pull the gasping corporal into cover. Others popped up from cover to take potshots, but the private was lucky enough to avoid getting hit, and Kim sent another enemy trooper spinning backwards with a shoulder wound.

By then, the private had pulled the corporal close, and Kim tore open his uniform and equipment vest. One glance, however, and she could see that he was beyond saving; the pathetic field dressings she had with her were of no use patching up a man struggling to breath, with both lungs punctured and a bullet through the heart. Within the next few seconds, the corporal had stopped tugging at his vest, and his jaw went slack.

"God dammit! Ken!" The private screamed in anguish, bent over the body of his dead comrade.

Kim yanked the private away from the corpse and threw him back into more secure cover, as a fresh hail of rounds peppered their position. "Calm the fuck down, trooper!" She squeezed off another three-round burst over the cover, not caring whether it hit. "He's dead, but you're not! Now pick up your rifle and get ready to kill something!"

The private let out one last cry and grabbed his A-14A4, spraying a hail of fire down the length of the hallway.

"Not now, you fuck!" Kim said, and sighed, as she vaulted over the steel door and made for another pillar. Trying to ignore the pain shooting up her leg with every step, she got out her second grenade and chucked it at the nearest enemy, a pair of troopers who were using their other comrades as distractions to target the private. One of them noticed her, but Kim fired from the hip, and the second trooper collapsed onto his left leg, now bleeding from Kim's desperate shots, and his other hand dropped his rifle to clutch the left side of his chest.

Kim dived for cover, and when the commando's comrade reached out to haul him back, both flew sideways with bloodied fronts as the grenade landed, and detonated fight beside them. Two bodies hit a section of glass with a wet sound and slid down, leaving two red trails down the transparent surface.

Kim crouched and leaned against the pillar, using her free hand to take out a field dressing. Within seconds, she had a decent bandage on her wound, and now with less pain, she found it easier to focus on what she had to do next. "Private!" she yelled, and made the hand sign for him to get ready to dash to cover.

The private continued to yell, only pausing to exchange an empty magazine for a loaded one.

"Private!" Kim yelled again, and considered firing at his cover to gain his attention. "Private, you have to bloody concentrate, you dumb fuck!"

The private yelled for a split second more, before a loud roar filled the air, and the space in front of Kim, who had her back to her cover and her enemies, filled with a typhoon of dust and debris. Kim had her combat goggles on, but she instinctively covered her eyes with her free arm all the same.

When she opened her eyes again, she got a clearer view of what had happened. An F-7D Spearhead, its wings and thruster nozzles a mangled and smoking mess, had crashed straight into the hallway and right over where the private had been. She didn't need to see anymore other than the red smear on the Spearhead's nosecone to know what had happened. As for the Spearhead's pilot, a shattered cockpit housing and a body half-hanging out of it, with the head twisted at an unnatural angle, told her the other half of the tale.

But all that took a back seat as Kim turned to face a new factor. By luck or design she didn't know which, but the Spearhead's crash had widened the initial hole made by the USSA commandos, and Kim could now see the scene of carnage that took place outside from where she was. The sky was dotted with smoke trails and black clouds of dust, and on the ground, burning husks of combat vehicles littered the area; those that were still operational fired at USSA tanks advancing onto the spaceport grounds. The OMNI troop transports were all but destroyed, their frames scattered across the airstrips that they had blocked hours ago.

"Well, shit," Kim said. She checked her R-441's magazine and let it fall, the plastic container falling to the ground with a hollow clattering, a handful of rounds rolling out. Slotting a full one into place, she peeked over the right corner of her cover.

A burst of gunfire sent a spray of wall plaster across her vision; had it not been for her combat goggles, Kim would have been reeling in pain from fragments in her eyes. Unfazed, she let loose a three-round burst; catching a USSA trooper in his cheek, she wasted no time in shifting her aim to another soldier, who had exposed a part of himself to throw a grenade. To the trooper's credit, he threw the device with all his might even as Kim nailed him squarely in the heart, and she was forced to dodge as the grenade landed right behind her cover. Kim dove and swung herself right out of the shattered window, trying to ignore the presence of glass shards on the window frame, and the possibility of an eighty-metre drop down.

The earth-shaking explosion nearly made Kim lose her grip, but she managed to hang on and swing herself back up. The moment she did however, a second grenade landed again, and this time, there was no other option than to dive over her precious cover; bullets passed too close to speak of, and somewhere in Kim's heart, she hoped that the commandoes would mistake her action of diving to the floor as being shot. The second explosion rattled her teeth as she covered her neck with both arms for protection against fragments, and she continued to lay on the ground, knowing that if she got up, she would be filled with holes without a chance. The sounds of gunfire became louder; seconds later it stopped abruptly, leaving the only sounds being those from outside.

Seconds of silence stretched into a full minute as Kim counted her breaths. Hearing the click of military boots, she remained still until she heard a familiar voice. "Sergeant, what are you doing down on the floor?"

Looking up, Kim saw Orson's face, accompanied by several OMNI troopers sporting various minor cuts and bruises. Orson himself had blood on his front, but from the way he had his usual swagger and a cheap cigarette in his mouth, Kim wagered that the blood wasn't his, down to the last red drop.

"Where the hell were you guys?" Kim asked as she got off the ground. Behind her surprise reinforcements were the bodies of USSA commandos, all of them wounded or dead, as the other troopers moved amongst them; any survivors they found were quickly silenced.

"We were cut off thanks to those worthless meat sacks stampeding out of here like scared animals," Orson snorted. "Damned civies." He took a long drag on his cigarette before resuming. "Anyways, I got straight into a firefight after the escalator got blew up; one thing led into another, and I went on with Lieutenant Barsus's platoon before I linked up with these guys again to double back here."

"Sounds like you've had your own adventure," Kim said. She turned back to look outside and saw additional Spearhead fighters and troop transports overhead, ready to clean up what remained of the USSA's military still in Porta Panama. "What about the battle?"

"Done. Reinforcements just arrived ten minutes ago, and while we were weathering the siege here other units have been hammering on the rest of the USSA from outside," Orson said, dropping his cigarette onto the face of a dead USSA commando and grinding his boot on both dead man's face and cigarette butt. He pressed his headset close to his ear. "Seems like new orders."

Kim tried her best to ignore Orson's lack of respect, and activated her headset. "New orders are right," she said. "Looks like Porta Panama is ours." She turned to look at the eight companies' worth of infantry that had just newly arrived on the battlefield. "Utter force…" She let her R-441 drop to her side as the troop transports disgorged their load over the mass driver, a massive cloud of parachutes. Spearheads swopped low, destroying fleeing USSA tanks, or shot down the last of their fighters still in the airspace.

Kim turned to walk away from the open window, motioning for Orson to follow her. "Could have done with less dead people on this one," she said, to no one in particular.

Afterword:

_ Last time was tank combat, and this time is infantry combat, dealing with the OMNI attack on the Porta Panama mass driver early in the war. This one is a rather short chapter with no particular goal or moral message in mind; rather, I wanted to make a bigger point out of what might be the cause of such a blatant invasion in the canon, Blue Cosmos being a highly likely answer. The rough language continues along with the ground-pounder viewpoint, but this time, I've tried to squeeze more action into it._

_ In the canon OMNI easily gets the mass driver and the United States of South America, the former owner of the mass driver, is said to have a rather weak military. Overall, this chapter isn't much, just something I've wanted to try writing within the context of the CE-verse. The next chapter returns to mobile suit combat, so please do stay ready for it._


	8. Chapter 8: Sunset at Lagrange Four

_Author's Note:_

_This fanfic is to write upon some of the events in Gundam SEED and SEED Destiny that are not touched upon or mentioned in-series, but their dates are listed on GundamWikia and are thus treated as part of canon. They are therefore based upon actual happenings in the Cosmic Era universe, but the events within them are open to interpretation. This fanfic is also an attempt at showcasing a "what-if" of all sides involved in the wars, and how some of the events within the show might have come to be._

**Gundam SEED: Tales of the Cosmic Era**

**Chapter 8: Sunset at Lagrange Four**

**CE 70 June 17th, 34 400 kilometres to Nova Mining-Purposed Asteroid, Laurasia-class _Faith of the Future_**

**Afternoon 13 03**

Larry Falke let the sealed water bottle drift from his grasp, his attention focused on the computer screen in front of him. Green lines traced themselves across a grid-marked virtual battlefield as Larry keyed in commands for the battlefield strategy simulator, and he allowed himself a small smile as the green lines crisscrossed along the paths of dozen more red lines. The red lines rapidly vanished in short order, and Larry, satisfied, put the computer on standby and left his personal quarters.

On-board the ZAFT _Laurasia-class _frigate _Faith of the Future_, part of Battlegroup Charlie sent to reinforce the first ZAFT fleet sent to the mining asteroid of Nova_, _Larry had spent the last three days trying to catch up on his rest. He'd just fought the ending battles of the Grimaldi Front and participated in its retreat, culminating in the cataclysmic Battle of Endymion where he got a front-row seat to the destructive powers of OMNI's oft-rumoured superweapon, the Cyclops System. While non-nuclear in nature, he wondered how long would it take for the Natural-led Earth Alliance to turn it into a fireable weapons system; if Cyclops System missiles could be launched en-masse, it would very likely spell the end of the advantages that ZAFT enjoyed over their less technologically-advanced opponent… or even the end of the PLANTs.

Larry shook his head free of that doomsday thought and continued walking towards the ship's main meeting room for pilots. He was about to get additional men for his squadron, which had been split up during the course of the Grimaldi campaign, and it would do him no good to make the newcomers uneasy with an overzealous prediction. A corner of his mind wandered back to the past month, where he had worked closely with the crew of the _Nazca-class_ destroyer _Nox Avis_. They had fought in many battles, and both Larry's squadron and the crew of the _Nox Avis_ had more than saved each others' hides; they had fought back-to-back in impossible conditions and won nigh-hopeless battles against a numerically superior foe. He would be lying to deny that he felt wistful at having to part ways with them.

Larry paused to gather his thoughts as he reached the door entrance to the meeting room. The automated door slid open, and Larry entered the room, report in hand, ready to brief the next group of men under him. Now that he had been named overall commander of the MS forces on board the _Faith of the Future_, he had to make sure that his command was rock-solid.

Two of them, he could see, were fresh graduates of pilot school; he could see it in their eyes, wider than most and never still on any occasion; the way they sat, leaning slightly forward than the relaxed stance of veterans, and the tautness in their facial expressions before a briefing-that bit of tension was always there. The other three were veterans, judging from the campaign badges they wore, and Larry recognized Kou Hanada sitting in a corner. The man was a fellow graduate from Larry's batch, and while Larry had spent a short stint as an MS instructor before the Bloody Valentine War had seen his signing up as a frontline soldier, Kou had been assigned to homeland defence from the start and had been there until recently. The two had kept sparse contact since, but Larry knew Kou's skill well; they had both fought over the title of Best Pilot Graduate in their time, and Larry could most definitely attest to Kou's skill.

"Commander," Kou said, standing up and salute. The other pilots stood up and saluted as well. One of the new pilots fumbled his salute, perhaps too nervous at the thought of sailing into battle to think straight.

"At ease," Larry said. "Gentlemen, no doubt you have already been briefed on our mission; to attack and take the Republic of East Asia's mining asteroid, Nova. The station is a valuable resource point and will add greatly to our store of war materials. That is also why our fleet will be a bit tight on manpower; Nova is needed, and ZAFT is getting stretched on all fronts. The faster we can take or destroy Nova, the better off ZAFT will be. Today we'll just be discussing some of the lower-level tactic we might have to constantly rely on once we reach Nova…"

**CE 70 June 21st, 24 000 kilometres to Nova Mining-Purposed Asteroid, Laurasia-class _Faith of the Future_**

**Evening 05 19**

Days later, Kou was watching the stars from the observation viewport when Larry approached from behind. Larry had wanted to talk, but a busy administrative schedule had kept him from seeking out the man. "'Tis good to see you again, Kou," he said, and clapped his hand on Kou's back. "Nice to have a familiar face around."

"Not something I'll hear from a commander," Kou said, unable to keep a slight grin from breaking out. "I've heard that you've gone through some tough times on the Grimaldi Front."

"'Ain't more than just what every pilot goes through nowadays," Larry said, joining Kou in his stargazing. "The war is still escalating, and we're now engaged both on Earth and in space. Personally I think that if we don't find a way to turn the war to our utter favour, we might be cruising for a lost cause. And for us, a lost cause entails more than just lowering the flag of the PLANTs."

"Have a bit of faith in your parent nation," Kou said. "The combined might of our skills and technology are more than capable of matching up against the numbers of those bigoted Naturals."

"Goliath was felled by one David, Kou," Larry said. "It's easy to think of us as the David from a personal point of view, but to the Naturals, each and every Coordinator is an arrogant Goliath." He turned to face Kou. "Sometimes I wonder what would happen if Goliath was swarmed by Davids."

Kou was silent as the two men stared out into space. "Then we just have to deny them that chance," Kou said. "Goliath and David were but humans. But we, the Coordinators… we're not just a bigger and stronger Natural. We're better, smarter than them." He fixed his gaze into the dark and starry distance.

**CE 70 June 25th, 14 990 kilometres to Nova Mining-Purposed Asteroid, Laurasia-class _Faith of the Future_**

**Afternoon 12 12**

Larry had spent the next four days organizing his team. Larry was in charge of two pilots, and he had assigned Kou another two pilots. He had placed the rookies under his command; _all the easier to keep them safe_, he reasoned.

It wasn't that he didn't trust Kou; Larry knew that both of them were liable to get overzealous sometimes, and with the fresh graduates under him, it was easier to keep track on what their capabilities were, and what orders were too much for them to handle. He didn't want to demand the impossible in the heat of battle; manpower had always been a concern for ZAFT, and it was paramount that they lose as little people in combat as possible.

Battlegroup Charlie was not a new and fresh fleet; the _Faith of the Future_ had participated in the Carpentaria drop and had supported drop operations during the Casablanca Sea Battle. Another _Laurasia-class_, the _Stanforth_, was another ship from the Grimaldi Front; sailing beside the _Faith of the Future_, Larry could see parts where the newly painted hull armour contrasted with the other faded parts of the ship that weren't directly damaged during the retreat. In-between them were four transport ships carrying important materials to Battlegroup Alpha, the first-strike ZAFT fleet that had gone ahead of them to contest OMNI's forces at Nova.

Providing the front and rear guard were two _Nazca-class_ ships, the _Argentum_ and _Valentine_. The two ships were in charge of maintaining the defence net around the fleet, and if anything were to intercept them before they came to Nova, the _Argentum _and _Valentine_, along with their mobile suit contingent, would be on the front of things. A third _Nazca-class,_ the _Dominatus_, acted as the fleet flagship.

Larry had gone through many strategies with his two pilots; Rowen Nezxa and Aleiya Varchenowa had improved plenty since his first sortie against them in the simulator. As for Kou's team, Kou had assured him that they were ready to sortie anytime.

Still thinking about what other ways he could improve his team's effectiveness, it took him a second to realize that the "high alert" alarm was sounding out throughout the ship. Keeping his thoughts for later, Larry set off at a run towards the pilot assembly room. When he arrived, he was pleased to find that Nezxa and Aleiya were already in their pilot gear, and more importantly, they had a data pad in their hands.

"An enemy attack, Nezxa?" Larry asked as he made for the male changing area, pausing only to take the data pad that Rowen offered him.

"It's a fast-attack group, sir," Rowen replied, a frown creasing his features. He paused to push a lock of brown hair out of his face, and continued. "Eight _Drake-class_ and two _Nelson-class_ warships. It's unconfirmed whether they have any mobile armours, but the _Faith of the Future_'_s_ radar crew have already picked up forty-odd approaching Moebius fighters."

"I see," Larry said. "Get Varchenowa and be ready in your GINNs. I'll be joining you shortly."

Rowen snapped off a hasty salute. "Yes sir."

Within three minutes, Larry had changed and was already en-route to his personal CGUE. He saw that the hangar crew had done a good job, and his unit looked as though it had just rolled out of the factory plants. His marking, three straight blue stripes interrupted by an all-white version of the portion of ZAFT's logo that resembled an hourglass, had been newly reapplied instead of the patchwork repainting done on the Grimaldi Front.

"Nezxa, Varchenowa," he activated his helmet's comm unit even as he drifted through the microgravity of the _Faith of the Future's _mobile suit hangar towards his unit, "update from Ops. We're joining the fight to take care of the Moebius units. _Argentum _and_ Valentine_ have scrambled their MS teams to intercept and will provide battleship support; our callsign this fight will be Falke Leader, Nezxa as Falke 1, and Varchenowa as Falke 2. Allied teams are Grey Team, Ashton Team, Oberon Team, Zakaur Team, and our own ship's Hanada Team. We're on intercept duty; Grey and Oberon Teams will handle anti-ship duties. Do you understand?"

"Yes sir," a pair of voices answered him. Larry could still hear some tension behind the voices, but for the most part, his rookies seemed determined to take on the enemy.

"This will be your first fight. Keep close and keep tight, and it'll be as easy as walking," Larry said. Settling into the cockpit of his CGUE in one fluid motion, he began to run the unit's system check. In front, he saw the last of Kou's team launch, followed by Aleiya's unit. Rowen's GINN followed shortly after, and Larry barely had time to close his cockpit hatch before he moved the CGUE onto the catapult system.

Once launched, Larry took a second to find his targets; he saw them, the light grey of the six _Drake-class_ ships appeared against the black of space; they were at 650 kilometres and closing. Around the ships, bright specks of light whirled around; the Moebius fighters were quickly aligning themselves into formation.

The intercom emitted a low burst of static and came to life. "This is Team Grey. Beginning assault on enemy ship formation with Team Oberon; _Argentum_ and _Valentine _will come into support fire range against enemy ship formation within three minutes, we require the way to be clear by then."

"This is Ashton Team," the reply came. "Three minutes it is."

Larry pushed the throttle of his CGUE, and let the sound of the rumbling engines surround him as his mobile suit accelerated. "This is the Falke Team. Moving into formation." On a private channel to Rowen and Aleiya, he added, "Get ready to keep up."

"Falke One here," Rowen said. "All systems green. Falling into formation." The GINN slid into position on Larry's right, armed with a sniper rifle and two "Pardus" leg-mounted missile boxes.

"Falke Two ready," Aleiya answered, her own unit to Larry's left. Unlike Rowen, the team's marksman, Aleiya's GINN carried the standard machinegun/sword combo, along with a pair of shoulder-mounted gatling guns taken from set of GINN Assault Type unit-conversion armour. Included were shoulder thrusters, giving Aleiya's unit greater manoeuvrability.

Larry engaged the afterburners on his unit and the CGUE leapt forward, quickly leaving the GINN Assault Types of the Grey and Oberon Teams behind. His unit returned a salute from the lead GINN of Team Zakaur up at the front, the escort for their anti-ship combat teams. Turning back to the battlefield, the CGUE's sensors quickly identified and begun tracking the first Moebius to come into range; beside him, Kou and his comrades had caught up and were already opening fire.

The first Moebius to come into view was quickly shredded by a burst of fire from the CGUE's shield-mounted 28mm vulcan system; the rounds cut through the twin-engine mobile armour, severing its left main engine from the rest of the craft and mangling its entire left side. The Moebius spun out of control and veered to the right, running straight into the path of one of Kou's teammates; the GINN simply took out its sword and sliced the fighter into half as it passed by, even as it increased speed to throw off a missile lock from another Moebius.

Behind Larry's first target was another Moebius; this one had veered to the left to avoid the deadly hail of gunfire from Larry's CGUE. "Falke Leader here," Larry said on the team intercom. "One running left."

"I have him," Aleiya said, her GINN turning to the left to pursue the straggler. The Moebius did a full turn to face the GINN even as its inertia carried it away from its foe, and it let loose with all four missiles it carried under its frame.

Clenching her teeth, Aleiya forced herself to stay on course and triggered the shoulder-mounted gatling guns; the rounds tore into the missiles, filling the space in-between MS and MA with glittering clouds of fragments and fire, and she activated the GINN's heavy machine gun for the Moebius.

Unlike its appearance, the GINN's MMI-M8A3 heavy machinegun was more in line with firing a light cannon. Four rounds were all it took to demolish the Moebius fighter, the 76mm high-explosive heavy rounds tearing through the spacecraft and ripping it apart. A fiery flash, and all that was left of the Moebius were the mangled remains of it side-mounted main thrusters and a few other pieces.

Another Moebius exploded, the sniper round from Rowen's GINN penetrating the mobile armour's powerplant. The spacecraft fragmented even as its own inertia carried it past Larry's team, and bits of the Moebius drifted in all directions.

"This seems a bit too easy," Rowen remarked, using the GINN's left arm to deflect a stray piece of debris.

"Not if you're being swarmed," Larry replied. "We're going to maintain our momentum. Manoeuvre Nine."

"Acknowledged," his squadmates answered as they moved into formation. Larry led the front, with Aleiya's unit slightly behind him and Rowen hanging a fair distance back; that was Manoeuvre Nine, The Shield, a squad-based tactical arrangement that made use of a three man team, with a ranged interceptor, a defensive interceptor and the outermost man leading the team.

"This is Ashton Team, we've engaged rear enemy forces from below them. Allied casualties zero, enemy casualties six… and now eight," the intercom crackled. "No further launch of Moebius units detected. Looks like the _Drake-class_ ships are empty."

"This is Falke Team, copy," Larry answered. "Moving to wipe out enemies on the bravo side."

"Hanada Team here, copy," Kou's voice sounded out. "Alpha flank enemies are down to 20%. Anti-ship intercept path Alpha is clear. Grey Team, Oberon Team, you're good to go."

"Roger that, Grey Team, Oberon Team engaging," a voice answered. "Our escorts will vector to bravo flank to continue the assault."

Larry eased the control stick to the side, narrowly avoiding a linear gun round as it sliced through empty space. The CGUE's motion tracking alarm emitted a high-pitched alarm as it registered the round for that split-second.

Looking to the front, Larry noticed that a group of seven Moebius had arranged themselves into a formation of sorts, staggering their firing. Behind them, eight other Moebius were swiftly retreating from the battle zone and were heading back to their ships, which were already launching missiles in the direction of the ZAFT MSes approaching.

"This is Falke Leader to Grey and Oberon, I have a visual on enemy forces on vector to enemy fleet," Larry said even as he threw the CGUE into a dead stop and rocketed upwards. The Moebius swarm turned to track him but scattered seconds later, as Aleiya's GINN charged in, automatic weapons blazing; one of the Moebius exploded instantly from a hail of 76mm rounds, while another spun out of control into the blackness of space, pressurized fuel and air leaking from multiple holes in its left side. "Moebius units are most likely taking up defensive positions around the fleet and will use allied gun support to their advantage."

"That's bad," Zakaur Leader's voice sounded out. "Request anti-ship teams to have escort reinforcements for higher survival chance."

"Copy that Falke Leader," Grey Leader's voice replied. "But in-between us are quite a sizable number of Moebius. Time's the problem here."

"Ashton Leader here, we'll take up the task," Ashton Team's GINNs stopped their forward movements and turned to face the retreating Moebius. "We'll run a first-strike intercept run, cut the Moebius swarm off before they can get into support range. Team Zakaur, stay your course with Oberon and Grey."

Larry let the radio chatter drift into a corner of his mind as he continued his fight. He wasn't in a keystone position this time around, and he decided that with Hanada now free, the anti-ship teams were more than likely to survive the battle.

Focusing on the fight, he tightened his hands on the control stick, moving his CGUE into position behind a Moebius that was trying to get to Rowen, who was preoccupied with sniping down another Moebius. Judging by the way the space fight jerked left and right, Larry surmised that the pilot had been completely taken by surprise. 28mm rounds tore into the back fuselage of the Moebius and the mobile armour begin to bleed coolant and fuel from its tanks, its entire rear a smoking mess.

As the explosion claimed another Moebius, Larry turned back to see Aleiya tracking another Moebius; the fighter was turning in an arc around her, and rather than make the common rookie's mistake of firing and tracking at the same time, Aleiya decided to ignore the mobile armour, blasting her GINN's thrusters to chase after another Moebius. Her initial target turned to take advantage of the GINN's turned back, but Rowen, having disposed of his original target, turned and fired, and the steel anti-armour round tunnelled into the mobile armour from its right, the impact causing the Moebius' left engine to tear away from the mainframe as the round exited with ease. Seconds later it exploded, scattering debris fragments everywhere.

The last Moebius took a dozen direct hits from Larry's CGUE's heavy machinegun even as Aleiya chased down her own target and pummelled the Moebius with 76mm rounds. Larry's target exploded, while Aleiya's target came to pieces from the speed at which it was trying to flee.

Using her GINN's sword to knock away the drifting remains of a Moebius' linear gun, Aleiya returned to her initial squad position. "Falke One here; enemies cleared. No movements detected," she said.

"Falke Two here. My scope is clear," Rowen said. "That was… much easier than expected, commander."

"Don't get ahead of yourself," Larry said, although he was also pleased with the progress the new pilots had made in the past few days. Certainly, their skill and teamwork was close to the levels of his old team, and with a bit more practice, might actually surpass them.

Right now, however, his job was to make sure that they knew that further improvement was possible. "The Mobius is a severely outdated fighter that nevertheless is effective given the right situations and numbers. Our mobile suits, on the other hand, are new, and while showing excellent performance, might one day reveal a fatal flaw that cannot be corrected in time." He paused as Oberon and Grey Teams reported their battle status; they had sunk the _Drake-class _vessels, and all the teams had returned safely. "If we're complacent, we might suffer defeat without even knowing how."

**CE 70 June 29th, 4 990 kilometres to Nova Mining-Purposed Asteroid, Laurasia-class _Faith of the Future_**

**Morning 06 17**

Far away from Battlegroup Charlie in a radius around Nova, flashes of light dotted the darkness as ZAFT and OMNI warships fired on each other; those hit and crippled in space were quickly set upon by crowds of Moebius or mobile suits, the smaller war vehicles tearing up the wounded ships like a swarm of predatory flies on a corpse. The space was thick with debris big and small; even the numerical superiority of OMNI did not deter ZAFT from teaching them the gulf in-between both faction's technology, and OMNI was not deterred by the heavy losses it had suffered thus far in defending Nova as it threw all it had against the hard-pressed ZAFT Battlegroup Alpha.

Larry continued to watch the video feed as it played, showing the current situation of the forces at Nova, until the video begun to loop again. Shutting the feed, he turned to address the pilots gathered in the meeting room.

"This is the current situation at Nova. OMNI is fighting for every inch of space they can get in there, and while ZAFT forces have been hitting them hard, they haven't been able to reach into the interior of the station for a take-and-hold action."

Larry brought up a schematic of the hollowed-out resource satellite on the main display screen, showing the gathered pilots the interior. The information had come at great cost; ZAFT had lost three _Laurasia-class_ frigates and two _Nazca-class_ destroyers, as well as several dozen mobile suits and nearly a hundred infantry marines just to glimpse what made Nova tick. "As you can see, it's not just a simple resource satellite anymore; OMNI has re-purposed the interior for ship-building and repairs, and defences have been outfitted to the exterior of the asteroid." Larry tapped the screen controls once and red highlighted patches appeared on the surface of Nova, showing where defensive turrets had been placed. "The original plan of landing squads of commandoes into Nova still stands, but the fight is going to be much harder, and we'll have to rely a lot on stealth if we want to see a success."

Larry shut the screen off. "Starting from four days ago, we've been hit with picket force after picket force," he said referring to the first battle they had with OMNI and the subsequent fights that had followed as Battlegroup Charlie made their way closer to Nova. "OMNI has enough manpower to not only hold the lines at Nova, but to conduct patrols and harassing raids around the radius of Nova. Once at Nova, there will only be two possible outcomes; we either take the station, or we destroy it and retreat. Any other outcome is not acceptable."

Larry turned to face the assembled pilots. "As for a retreat, it's out of the question. The moment we link up with Battlegroup Alpha, assuming that we manage to get to them, OMNI is going to close on us like a pair of steel jaws. Once in, forever in." He closed the display. "Individual tactics are fine; just follow the big picture during missions. Is that understood?"

"Yes sir!" the gathered pilots replied.

As the pilots filed out of the meeting room, Kou approached Larry. "Doing well as squadron leader, buddy," he said.

"For now," Larry grimaced. "The stress is incredible. When I hand over to the _Dominatus _during a real mission, it feels so much better to have just two pilots to care about."

"There's going to be a lot of that once we link up with Battlegroup Alpha," Kou said. "I still wonder how we're going to take on Nova. I've never seen an asteroid base get that fortified before."

"Artemis is an even more extreme example," Larry offered.

"True, but that place is worthless," Kou said. "Thousands of miles away from shipping routes and combat zones. Given how that place has been so heavily fortified, I wonder why they didn't just set it on a collision course for the PLANTS."

Larry was trying to think up a witty reply when the high alert alarm sounded again. "Damn," Larry muttered. "That was fast."

"We're well into Republic territory. I just hope that it's a picket force we're going up against, and not a reinforcement fleet," Kou said.

"We'll find out soon enough," Larry replied, as the pilots sped into the changing room.

"_Faith of the Future_ to all pilots, this is not a drill," the operator's voice echoed throughout the cool, sterile corridors and rooms of the ship. "I repeat, this is not a drill. Enemy forces detected to starboard side bearing three-five-four at twenty-degree decline from fleet axis. One _Agamemnon-class_, six _Drake-class_ and four _Nelson-class._"

Larry already had his pilot suit halfway on when the alarm abruptly changed tone. Larry looked up in surprise, as did Kou. "Oh, hell no," Larry said, recognizing the alert for close-range fleet warfare.

"Damn," Kou said, jamming his helmet on. "Looks like OMNI's determined to make up for out mobile suits by getting into close-range with their ships."

Larry hit the door controls, and was out of the changing room and into the walkway leading into the hangar before the doors even opened properly. "With four _Nelson_-_class_ battleships, they're going to try and steamroll us in ship-to-ship combat before the mobile suits can sink them," Larry paused to adjust his helmet as the two stepped into the hangar, joining the flurry of activity in the cavernous space. "Their Mobius fighters are going to be under point-defence cover as well."

"Well, things come and we deal with them," Kou said, as he made for his own unit. "See you on the other side."

Larry nodded as he entered his own unit. To his relief, he saw that Rowen and Aleiya were already in their GINNs. "Commander," Aleiya said. "Is there an equipment requirement for this battle?"

"None that I'm aware of," Larry replied. "Grey and Oberon Teams are taking heavy weapons as usual; stick to something light, or the Mobius fighters will swarm you with no effort. The warships will be striking each other in combat, so make sure you focus on the Moebius fighters to prevent them from stinging our ships."

"Yes sir," Aleiya replied.

Larry's CGUE was the first to be out; by that time, the OMNI fleet had already closed to main gun distance, and Larry held his breath as a green beam cannon shot narrowly missed spearing the _Argentum_ head-on. To its portside, the _Valentine_ returned fire, and the shots grazed the a _Drake-class_, the explosions of its starboard missile pods sending the lighter warship tilting to its port side.

Aleiya's unit launched without incident, but as Rowen's unit launched, an alert blared in the CGUE's cockpit. "Moebius fighters, high up, two o' clock!" Larry shouted. "Falke Two! Lay down some cover fire; prevent them from getting into the heart of the fleet!"

"Acknowledged!" Aleiya shouted as her GINN fired its rifle at the approaching group of eight Mobius fighters. 76mm rounds slashed through space, pockmarking two Moebius with holes as the rest released their missiles and scattered; a third one erupted in flames as its path brought it into the arc of fire from a 28mm vulcan cannon from Larry's CGUE.

"Down those missiles!" Larry shouted, adding his CGUE's rifle fire to the mix. Tracers cut through space as the two mobile suits and the _Faith of the Future_'s CIWS guns fought to keep the launching mobile suits from being easy targets.

Rowen's GINN joined Aleiya's unit at her side and added his gunfire to theirs, the three units forming a tight net of overlapping fields of fire. The last missile, its rocket engine smashed, tumbled off-course before its timed fuse ran out, the warhead detonating harmlessly several hundred metres away from the _Faith of The Future._

Larry used the chance to catch up with the radio chatter. "Grey and Oberon Teams have launched. Falke Team, prepare for escort duty. We've got orders from battlegroup command; we're going to hit their flagship while our ships attempt to keep away and alive until then."

"The _Agamemnon-class_ carrier?" Rowen asked. "I thought the _Nelson_-_class_ b-"

"Correct, in a sense," Larry said, cutting off the younger pilot, "but taking out the enemy main coordination ship is as much a demoralization tactic as it is to reduce their capabilities. If there's one thing ZAFT doesn't have, it's a dedicated warship for battlefield coordination. That _Agamemnon-class_ has tactical abilities and advantages that we don't have, and for that, it's got to go."

"Yes sir," Rowen said.

Falke Team fell into a simple arrowhead formation, weapons blazing, as Grey and Oberon Teams positioned themselves behind the three mobile suits.

"Thick like a cloud of flies," Larry grunted as Kou, leading Haneda Team, joined the group.

"It could be worse," Kou said.

Larry put his CGUE into a spin as several missiles tracked his unit, courtesy of two Mobius squadrons approaching from the front. 28mm vulcan roaring, Larry set his CGUE to accelerate straight towards the front, letting the missiles overlap and turn to chase him, using this chance to shoot them down one-by-one.

"Falke Leader!" Rowen shouted, accelerating as well. "Mobius incoming from the front!"

"I can see them!" Larry said. "Stay your course!"

Thrusters fired, and the CGUE changed course. To the Moebius pilots, the mobile suit was flying upwards as it shot down the last of the missiles chasing it, before angling straight for them.

Railgun fire streaked towards the CGUE as Larry used minute movements to evade the powerful armour-piercing rounds, his mobile suit's own guns blazing their own reply to the OMNI fighters' challenge. Clenching his teeth from the continued sequence of sudden acceleration, deceleration and directional changes, Larry passed the Mobius squadron in a flash of grey, leaving behind the shattered hulls of six mobile armours in its wake.

The fighters turned to intercept the CGUE, but by then the rest of the mobile suits had caught up, and Larry slammed on his controls as his CGUE pointed its legs forward, reversing his direction in less than a second; for a moment, Larry's vision narrowed, the edges turning red, and he clenched his teeth to keep himself from losing his concentration.

As the CGUE shot backwards and the Mobius fighters were forced to change direction again, Haneda Team, Rowen and Aleiya's GINNs cut swathes of destruction through the swarm of mobile armours, the impacts from the 76mm HE rounds and fuel explosions shattering lightly-armed Mobius formation like a thrown rock set upon a glass ornament. It took less than five minutes for them to lay waste to all the fighters in the area.

"Falke Leader," Kou said, "Incoming from port, bearing eleven-ten-ten from your position at a 40-degree incline. Mobius fighter formation. I'll vector over to intercept."

"Do so," Larry said. "I'll bring Oberon and Grey Teams over. Just a minute more…"

Falke, Grey and Oberon Teams engaged their thrusters, their mobile suits dashing through a hail of missiles, CIWS tracers, and burst munitions, until they reached the heart of the fleet formation; the _Agamemnon-class_ carrier. "Falke Team to Grey and Oberon Teams, the stage is all yours," Larry said. "We'll stay on-area for additional cover," Larry's CGUE turned to face the incoming Mobius fighters coming from behind their formation, its mono-eye glowing a brilliant crimson, "from some upstarts who don't know when to stop."

Oberon Leader's GINN Assault Type snapped off a brief salute. "You do just that, Falke Leader, and we'll put on a fireworks display worthy of blanking out the sun."

Oberon Team's four GINN Assault Types fell into formation, with Oberon Leader opening fire with a M69 "Barrus" Heavy Ion Cannon. "Oberon Team!" Oberon Leader tightened his grip on the controls. "Manoeuvre Twelve!"

The green beam burned against the hull of the _Agamemnon-class_'s prow, the anti-armour weapon cutting a crude tear into the surface of the ship. The carrier's armour was tough, but that was what Oberon Leader had expected.

The other three GINN Assault Types raised their weapons, each of them carrying two M66 "Canus" Short-range Guided Missile Launchers. The weapons mounted two anti-ship missiles each, and the warheads were powerful enough to blow holes in warship armour with a single hit.

Oberon's team tactic was to fire those missiles _into_ ships, using the tactical manoeuvre known in slang as the "Jet Stream Attack". The first two missiles struck the tear, widening the opening into a gaping, jagged hole, as the second pair of missiles slammed into the interior of the ship, opening up the front of the _Agamemnon-class_ like a flower of twisted metal.

While many pilots preferred to fire directly at the bridge of the warships they tried to sink, it was a risky endeavour; it only destroyed the central command and not the ship's internal systems, which could still pose a threat to the attackers.

As well, N-Jammers in space reduced the range of guided weapons and targeting computers, and since ZAFT warships carried a scaled-down version of ZAFT's greatest invention, this also affected the field in which mobile suits fought in. On one hand it severely reduced the range of enemy combatants, but on the other hand friendly missiles didn't have enough space to mount separate counter-jamming devices for the N-Jammer's disrupting effects against electronic communications and warhead homing capabilities, which severely reduced their operation range.

There was no guarantee that the carrier's CIWS wouldn't shoot down the missiles, or worse, a GINN. Rather than expose themselves to the CIWS guns on the carrier while they had to stabilize themselves to let the missile acquire a target lock, this way Oberon Team's GINN Assault Types could fire on the move _and _do more damage.

The next four missiles struck _the Agamemnon-class_ in its shattered prow, the secondary explosions ripping through the ship's midsection; its twin beam cannons warping as the firing mechanisms fried from the force and impact of the anti-ship missiles.

The last four missiles sealed the ship's fate; the carrier's reactor was blown apart, and the _Agamemnon-class_ twisted and shuddered as the carrier exploded into white-hot debris. The GINN Assault Types of Oberon Team sped through the glittering cloud, joined by Grey Team; they had disabled the two Nelson-class acting as escorts for the main carrier, and with their bridges blown to hell the battleships had no choice but to retreat; while they could still move and fire and their CIWS systems were automated, they were essentially worthless in ship-to-ship combat without coordination.

"Good job," Larry said as Falke Team moved back into covering formation for the anti-ship teams. "Best fireworks for the month."

"Just the month?" Grey Leader laughed. "Any more and I might have to start charging you for front row seats, Falke Leader."

Green beams lanced out, slashing into the OMNI warships as the ZAFT battlegroup sprung their attack, concentrating their fire on single targets. The first two ships to go were the _Nelson_-class battleships; without the advanced coordination capabilities of the _Agamemnon_-class, the ZAFT fleet was able to outrange and outmanoeuvre their opponents.

The remaining OMNI ships opened fire as well, but with their main warships out for the count, and with other mobile suit teams harassing them, the OMNI fleet fell in short order as Battlegroup Charlie ripped into the disorganized enemy fleet.

Larry put his CGUE into a stop as he turned to survey the shattered wrecks of the OMNI fleet. Warship husks drifted lazily, their exteriors burnt, rendered asunder and scarred with scorch marks, and their interiors devoid of life. The remains of Mobius fighters were enough to turn the area into a sea of waste material. OMNI ship lifepods drifted everywhere; Battlegroup Charlie had neither the time nor resources to pick them up. The survivors were going to have to hope that their allies were close by.

Battlegroup Charlie, however, had taken their first loss; Zakaur Team had lost one of their pilots and mobile suits, and Ashton Team had one of their GINN High Maneuver Types damaged beyond repair. Perhaps the greatest loss was a reactor leak on one of the transport ships, necessitating that they evacuate the ship personnel and have the remaining three transports tow it behind them.

The greatest damage to the battlegroup was on the _Stanforth_, which had done an excellent job as a vanguard ship and was destroyed for its troubles. The _Valentine __had _lost one of its beam cannons as well, cutting its main firepower by a quarter until it could be repaired.

"We took losses in this fight," Rowen said, his voice low.

"It's part of the battlefield," Larry replied. "If you can't stomach seeing dead men float in space, then you have no choice but to get used to it."

Rowen's reply was quiet. "Yes, sir."

**CE 70 June 30th, 280 kilometres from Nova Mining-Purposed Asteroid at Lagrange Point Four, Laurasia-class _Faith of the Future_**

**Morning 05 33**

Larry was already up and about during the ending time of the _Faith of the Future's_ night shift. In space, where blackness was all around, Larry had found it easier to deal with fatigue; his mind didn't have to deal with visual cues like the sun setting or rising.

"Good morning, commander," Aleiya said as he passed her in the corridor.

"The same to you, Varchenowa," Larry replied. "Awfully early for the morning shift to be up and around."

"I… couldn't sleep, sir," Aleiya said. "Not after yesterday."

Larry arched an eyebrow. "Oh? What happened?"

"Just a feeling of anxiety, sir," Aleiya said. "Nothing much."

"Then don't be bothered by it," Larry said. "You and Nezxa are doing fine. Keep it up, and we'll make it through Nova."

Leaving the junior pilot to her duties, Larry continued to the ship's mess hall. There, he found Kou Hanada and his co-pilots, discussing tactical formations.

"Don't make me look bad, Kou," Larry said as he joined them, coffee cup in hand. "Even I don't start work that early."

"You should," Kou said, his mouth in a half-grin. "If you wait 'till lunch, all your tactical discussions will end with pie."

Larry laughed, and took a look at the manoeuvres that Kou was discussing with his team members. "That looks risky," Larry remarked, going over the detail sheet of three GINNs attacking a _Drake-class_ escort warship; none of the GINNs in the schematics were carrying heavy weaponry.

"We're not going to try that without at least having other dedicated anti-ship teams bringing up the rear, sir," one of Kou's wingmen, whom Larry recognized as a man called Sato, said. "Of course, we're not looking to sink a ship, just to disable its key points. We were thinking on using this for heavy capital ships protecting a flagship, like what happened yesterday."

"Good call," Larry said. "You'll never know when you might need to open up a path for allied warships."

The four men talked tactics all throughout the morning until an announcement cut them short. "This is ZAFT Battlegroup Charlie Flagship _Dominatus_ to all ships. We are now linking up with Battlegroup Alpha to effect a joint-task-force operation. All operations are now henceforth under the command of Battlegroup Alpha flagship _Strike Aquila_."

"The combined Task Force will be known by the callsign _Blaze_," the operator continued. "New operation orders have been issued; an OMNI fleet has been sighted on an intercept vector from both the port and stern side of Task Force Blaze, and a general ready order has been issued to all pilots."

"Well, straight into the fire," Larry remarked.

"Has it ever been any other way," Kou replied, filing away his notes as fast as he could.

**CE 70 July 5th, 140 kilometres from Nova Mining-Purposed Asteroid at Lagrange Point Four**

**Afternoon 14 12**

Four days after the arrival and merging of both ZAFT battlegroups, skirmishes between the ZAFT fleet and the OMNI forces had broken out, even as another ZAFT reinforcement group arrived.. Larry had had to sortie four times, and each time the battle had ended inconclusively, with neither side losing enough to count as a tactical loss, nor winning enough to even count as a small victory.

Larry continued to fiddle with the settings on his CGUE's sensors, as the Falke Team escorted a pair of GINN Reconnaissance Types on patrol duty. While the Recon Types had a massive range and a powerful weapon, they were poor at dealing with massed attacks by Mobius fighters, and their manoeuvrability in a fight were reduced by the lack of shoulder thrusters and mobility limiters to prevent damage to their sensor equipment.

"So far, all's clear," Aleiya remarked, as her own GINN held formation to Larry's left. The mobile suit's mooneye swivelled back and forth. "I don't think anything could hide here and not be seen by the Recon Types."

"Maybe it's stealth," Rowen remarked. "Have you heard the rumours about the Earth Alliance developing new weapons?"

"Rumours are rumours," Larry said. "The place is littered with debris both big and small; we'll deal with that when the time comes, but first, we have to make sure this place is clean so OMNI doesn't stick a fleet up us from behind."

"This is Privida Leader," the radio link opened to the lead GINN Recon. "Something on the radar is coming at high speeds. Several, in fact."

Larry immediately set the transmission to an all-open allied broadcast. "Can you identify it?"

"Negative. Sensor wave reflection from all the debris is making it impossible to identify it. Five seconds to visual range. I'll link up the feed to your unit, sir."

"Thanks. Keep a close eye on it," Larry said.

A second screen opened on the CGUE's display, and Larry felt his breath stick in his throat. There were a large group of Moebius fighters heading through the debris straight for Task Force Blaze, but that wasn't what caught his attention.

It was what half of the Moebius fighters were carrying under them. He'd recognize the white-and-orange casing anywhere, the shape of the package resembling a large old-style whiteboard ink marker.

Nuclear missiles.

The comm crackled to life again. "Privida Leader to Falke Leader, do you have visual of the enemy?"

"I have it," Larry said, his tone clipped and cold. "Alert the ZAFT fleet, we have a situation on our hands." _If they've found a way to negate N-Jammer presence in Nova-_

"Sir, those are not nuclear missiles, I repeat, those are not nuclear missiles." A pause, before Privida Leader answered again. "I'm not reading ambient radiation signals from them."

Larry blinked. "No?"

"None, sir,"

Larry nonetheless put his CGUE into an intercept vector. "Alert the fleet anyways. They might have conventional anti-shipping warheads, or even found a way to hide the neutron emissions." The wild delusion of Cyclops System warheads flashed through his mind again before he squashed the thought.

"This is Privida One," a second comm channel opened. "Another group of Mobius fighters, hanging back from the main group. About eight-zero-eight at 20-degree incline from main enemy group. Reading heavy ambient particle emission from them. Non-nuclear; these read more like beam weapons."

_Ion signals?_ Larry thought. "Send that information back to the fleet, and hold your distance. Stay stealthy; don't reveal yourselves under any condition. Falke Leader out."

Rowen and Aleiya fell in behind his unit, their GINNs' thrusters blazing. "Are we really going to take on nearly eighty Mobius fighters?"

"Not take on, Falke One," Larry said, quickly plotting a fallback point. "Strike from individual directions and try to lure as many of them as away. The less escort fighters our reinforcements meet, the better." He uploaded the tactical map to both of their units. "This is the fallback point. If anything happens or the fight becomes more than you can take, retreat immediately. No point dying a sacrificial death here."

The two pilots acknowledged Larry's orders, their GINNs banking to take another approach to the enemy. Larry gripped his controls tight and aimed his CGUE's 28mm mounted vulcan, and the moment he entered range, he opened fire.

The escort Mobius fighters turned to face the new threat even as he sped straight into the heart of the enemy formation. His first burst of fire hit one of the enemies carrying the fake nuclear missiles; the Moebius' right engine exploded and took its cockpit along, ripping the fighter's missile restrains into pieces. The unarmed missile twirled into space, inert and having lost its launch code with its parent craft.

Immediately the escort fighters set upon Larry; he frantically pushed the controls as the CGUE dodged burst after burst of 40mm rounds, linear cannon shots, and homing missiles. A trail of return fire hit another missile-carrying Moebius as it attempted to shy away from the CGUE, its frame trailing smoke and pieces from getting hit by 76mm rounds.

Cursing, Larry pulled away and engaged the afterburners on his CGUE. The fire was getting too thick, and judging by the way the Mobius fighters were trying their best to chase him off, but not actively hunt him down, he had just stumbled into a sneak attack operation of sorts.

Noting Rowen and Aleiya's position on the tactical map, he decided to regroup the team; _the reinforcements would have to deal with the rest themselves, _he mused. The CGUE took off in Aleiya's direction, with fifteen Mobius fighters trailing behind.

Larry allowed himself a small laugh as his CGUE deftly manoeuvred behind a piece of warship battleplate, the lead Moebius fighter trying desperately and failing spectacularly to move out of the way as it smashed straight into the debris, the force shearing the mobile armour in half and killing the pilot instantly. The other Mobius scattered, some chasing him on his side of the debris, others going around. The CGUE's cockpit warning sirens were incessant as Larry sent burst after burst of 28mm and 76mm fire backwards, destroying missiles and clipping the occasional Mobius even as the enemy fighters fired back with everything they had.

"Falke Two, vector over to new position," he said, highlighting a new path for his wing mate.

"Roger that, Falke Leader," Aleiya said, her GINN kicking off a passing piece of debris to change direction. A crude and unconventional method, but one that was faster than using thrusters, and Larry inwardly marvelled at how fast his newcomers were picking up piloting skills. The kick sent the debris piece spinning off-course, and one of the Moebius fighters chasing Aleiya's GINN, unable to avoid in time, crashed headlong into the obstruction, spilling its internal components all over the battlefield in an elongating trail of fire. The other Mobius fighters arced around and came to bear on Aleiya again, a few firing missiles.

As Aleiya sped past, Larry's CGUE crossed directly over her path and opened fire with both of its automatic weapons. The combined hail of 28mm and 76mm rounds ripped into the second formation as the mobile armours struggled to change vector, confused between chasing the runaway GINN and the new attack by a CGUE that had come out of nowhere. The Mobius fighters chasing Larry slowed as they realized that they were in imminent danger of crashing into their comrades, although a few in front moved too late to avoid smashing into each other.

In a flash Larry had left both Mobius waves behind, the fighters scattered and moving sluggishly as some tried to search for Aleiya's GINN, while others regrouped to chase his CGUE. A stream of 76mm fire coming in from the side tore into the combined Mobius formation again, and the fighters turned just in time to see the GINN speed past.

_ Perfect,_ thought Larry. Some of the Mobius fighters chasing after him had gone over to the wave gunning for Aleiya, and as the Moebius fighters came into view, the CGUE, having doubled back from another direction hidden by debris, opened fire again, a hail of lead smashing through light armour and destroying components.

"Thanks for the assist," Aleiya said as her GINN joined Larry's CGUE, and both mobile suits rocketed away under the cover of confusion and massive amounts of debris to join Rowen's position. Between each other, the two mobile suits were responsible for over sixteen confirmed kills. "That was spectacular."

"Nothing much," Larry said. "Just an experimental manoeuvre taught to me in an advanced combat course for commanders before I departed from the Grimaldi Front. They called it Maneuver Twenty, the Brave Strike."

"Brave Strike? Odd name." Aleiya remarked.

"I'll tell the instructors if I return there," Larry said. "Get in from Rowen's left flank; I'll strike from the front."

"Aye Falke Leader," Aleiya replied, as her GINN pulled away; a large piece of warship armour soon obscured Larry's sight of her unit.

For Rowen, the young pilot continued to weave his GINN through the shattered remains of capital warships and mobile suits as twenty-odd Mobius fighters chased up to him, with more bringing up the rear. Two of the more ambitious ones crashed as he flew through the skeletal remains of a _Nazca-class_ destroyer, while the others struck from above, their haphazard fire forcing him to duck and weave, losing speed and letting the other Mobius fighters catch up.

Cursing, Rowen returned fire; one Moebius spun as coolant vented explosively from a tear in its side, but the mobile armour was otherwise still operational and soon righted itself. A second linear cannon round smashed into a drifting fuel tank in front of his GINN, the explosion of liquid fuel temporarily blinding sensors as his GINN forced its way through before the fuel could solidify all over his mobile suit. The GINN adjusted its vector and came to rest behind a piece of cannon wreckage that looked like it came from the main turret of a _Nelson-class_, and Rowen allowed himself to relax a little as he ran a quick systems check.

The cannon wreckage exploded seconds later as a dozen missiles slammed into it, and Rowen's GINN burst out from the expanding cloud of debris, heavy rifle blazing. 76mm rounds struck a few Moebius, but none had enough damage to be considered out of the fight; nevertheless, Rowen saw them fall back, their pilots none too eager to chase a GINN with a damaged Moebius.

The other fighters had barely took their place when Aleiya and Larry struck, crisscrossing paths of fire tearing into undamaged and wounded mobile armours alike. Larry stabilized his unit and added his firepower to the mix, before a burst of static alerted him to a communiqué from Larry.

"Bug out; Task Force Blaze is in direct combat. No sense staying here just lose the mothership," Larry said.

"Acknowledged," Rowen said, sending a last stream of 76mm fire towards the Mobius fighters. Levelling out his GINN, he sped off after the thruster contrails of his team members' mobile suits.

By the time the Falke Team had linked up with Privida Team and returned to Task Force Alpha, the battle was done. The Mobius groups had several beam cannon-equipped craft mixed in with the missile-carrying craft, escorted by what remained of their fighters than hadn't been lured off, but the intercepting mobile suits had done their job well. True to Larry's former guess, the missiles were indeed modified nuclear missiles with conventional warheads; a report that Larry got from the encrypted fleetwide comm channel had footage of one missile gutting the underside of a _Laurasia-class_.

Larry took off his helmet and breathed deeply, letting his mind relax as he manoeuvred his CGUE into a landing vector for the _Faith of the Future_, which was blackened on one side; the hull breach looked serious enough to put worry into Larry's mind. Task Force Blaze was being hammered by the OMNI fleet; if something didn't happen soon, Nova would become the resting ground for over eleven thousand ZAFT personnel.

**CE 70 July 11th, 140 kilometres from Nova Mining-Purposed Asteroid at Lagrange Point Four, Mobile Suit Hangar, Laurasia-class _Faith of the Future_**

**Night 23 30**

Larry surveyed the men assembled in front of him, their stances straight. Task Force Blaze, after weathering skirmish after skirmish and gathering information from carefully- calculated incursions, was finally ready to launch Operation Trident, a three-approach attack to take Nova.

"I'll explain this one last time. The main force of mobile suits, grouped under Alpha Mission Command in charge of the frontal field and headed by the _Nazca__-class_ _Strike Aquila_, will be acting against the main force of OMNI mobile armours and warships situated directly to our front. A second group of ZAFT warships under Bravo Mission Command and headed by the _Laurasia__-class_ _Berkut _will be attacking Nova from sector nine-nine-zero, taking axis centre from Nova itself, and a third task force under Charlie Command headed by the _Nazca__-class__ Zoya_ will attempt to sneak commandos into Nova and take it by force.

"I'll stress again," Larry said, surveying the assembled pilots. "This operation is a bet-all move. We may have received reinforcements, but the OMNI fleet was thrice as large as ours to begin with, and they haven't been whittled down by much. On our side, Task Force Blaze will be deploying a total of nearly three hundred mobile suits, every warship that can move, which numbers about twenty-nine capital ships of combined classes, and every infantry platoon the Task Force has; about eight hundred men."

Larry paused at the end of the line of pilots. "There will be no margin for error; I expect all to put your duty to ZAFT above all else. Nevertheless, keep an eye out for danger and stay cautious; a dead man may be honourable, but his name and skills are worthless to the nation if he cannot use them."

"Yes sir!" the assembled people echoed.

"Alright," Larry said, setting his helmet on his head. "Time to roll."

The blackness of space was filled with streaks of light as mobile suits launched from their ships. The warships began to move as well, and as though it were a single juggernaut of destruction, Task Force Blaze moved to meet the OMNI fleet stationed in front of it.

For Larry and his team, along with twenty-seven other mobile suits, their fight was not up front. Using the linear catapults, they had been launched in a different direction, to attack Nova from its starboard flank, and to open a path for the commandos. Larry himself had opted to carry an additional Cattus 500mm recoilless rifle, and both Rowen and Aleiya's GINNs were equipped with shoulder blocks from the GINN Assault Type, with Rowen armed with an additional rifle while Aleiya opted to use a GINN High Maneuver Type's 27mm assault rifle, with the standard sword attached.

Hanada Team was right beside them; Kou's unit had a sniper rifle, while his team mates each had an extra 76mm heavy rifle. Kou's GINN snapped off a salute, and the three GINNs veered away.

"Alright," Larry said, even as the tactical map displayed a mess of red contacts approaching the ZAFT line. "Falke Leader to all units, get ready for close-quarter combat."

Within a minute, the first wave of Mobius fighters entered shooting range. Aleiya engaged the afterburners on her unit, speeding forward to pierce a Moebius which had its side turned to her in order to avoid another GINN. The 27mm rifle blazed, spitting out a hail of rounds, and the GINN kicked off the mobile armour before it exploded in a shower of fragments and fuel.

Rowen, on his side, had rifles out and firing, 76mm rounds striking a Mobius dead centre. The craft crumpled from the impact and drifted off-course, and Rowen focused fire on another Moebius.

"Falke Leader to Falke Team, we're getting through the Mobius waves," he paused to fire at another beam cannon-equipped Mobius, ripping the craft to shreds, "Another two minutes and we should see one of the entrances to Nova."

"Are we going to _actually _enter Nova?" Aleiya asked.

"If we get the chance," Larry replied. "Stay close."

Falke Team continued their flight path, clearing space along with other allied units for the infantry gunboats to enter from the back of the asteroid. The shattered husks and hulls of destroyed Mobius fighters drifted through space as the ZAFT mobile suits preyed on the obsolete space fighters; nevertheless, Nova had been well-converted into a military base, and from its back, mobile armours continued to stream out from launching ports in its interior.

"This is Yulan Team," the radio crackled to life. "Enemy warships approaching from Battle Sector Alpha. Three _Agamemnon__-__class_, two _Nelson__-__class_ and fifteen _Drake__-__class_."

"Dammit," Rowen cursed. "They broke the fleet blockade!"

"Keep your cool," Larry replied. "Those might be new launches. Our objective is to secure an entry-point for the infantry; unless they get within range or launch fighters, they won't be much of a threat yet."

Several ZAFT GINNs veered off to meet and delay the new threat as the remainder continued to punch their way through the OMNI rear guard. Aleiya shot a Mobius that was going after another mobile suit, and the thruster units of the mobile armour flared as the rounds smashed the engine nozzles into twisted wrecks. Out-of-control, the fighter drifted off-course, until a passing GINN High Maneuver Type shot it with a hail of 27mm rounds.

Kou's team closed with Larry's as the enemy fire in the surroundings intensified. "This is starting to get suicidal," Kou remarked. "Just how many Mobius fighters do they have inside anyways?"

"It wouldn't be out of place for OMNI to have ships and mobile armours on standby in Nova itself; that place was originally a resource asteroid for the Republic of East Asia. I doubt they would have left it defenceless." Larry paused to fire at a passing Moebius equipped with a beam cannon, the arc of 76mm fire striking the under-slung cannon's mechanisms, and the resulting plasma explosion taking the Mobius along with it. "OMNI's direct involvement in the matter just meant that they up-gunned the place."

"This is Charlie Command to all forces," the comm sounded again, a force-wide transmission from the _Nazca__-class_destroyer _Zoya_. "Enemy fleet presence inside Nova has been detected by Privida and Forvent Teams from Entry-point Six-Six-Alpha. Advise all Charlie force to secure a landing point within ten minutes before full activation of enemy reserve force."

"_Ten minutes_?" Aleiya exclaimed.

"No complaining, Falke Two!" Larry said, throwing his unit into a steep turn to head straight for the objective point. "We either win this fight or we die as prisoners!"

The ZAFT force realigned themselves quickly, the lighter mobile suits protecting those that were carrying heavier anti-ship weapons and equipment as they forced their way through the Moebius blockade.

A loud alarm screamed in the cockpit of Larry's CGUE as a port bay door opened in the side of Nova, the very same door that Larry and the forces under Charlie Command were supposed to infiltrate Nova through. A _Drake__-class_ escort ship emerged, CIWS guns blazing; its missile pods opened and launched a storm of anti-MS missiles.

Larry winced as a missile smashed into a CGUE beside him, the blast destroying its head and most of its body frame, including its cockpit. The CGUE slowed down and tumbled through space for a second, parts flying off it, before exploding into a cloud of scattered parts as a second missile struck it. "Falke Leader to all units, I'm initiating entry point Six-Six-Alpha into Nova! Request two teams to follow through!"

"This is Hanada Team," Kou's voice cut into the combined fleet channel. His GINN slowed as it dashed in front of Larry's CGUE and swung its legs forward, feet thrusters firing as it stabilized itself and fired its sniper rifle.

The anti-armour round struck a Mobius fighter dead centre in its cockpit and exited from its back, before hitting another one in its left engine; both crashed into each other and tumble out of control. Kou's GINN manoeuvred back into formation beside the Falke Team, followed by his wingmen. "Initiating assistance run."

"This is Haqua Team," another voice replied, six GINN Assault Types falling behind Larry. "Leave that _Drake__-class_ to us; we need you to get inside and secure a Mobius-free zone for the rest of the mobile suits and gunboats."

"My thanks," Larry said, as the afterburners on his CGUE flared into life. The six mobile suits of Hanada and Falke Team dashed straight through the firing arcs of the _Drake__-class__'_ CIWS guns, the weapons tracking the mobile suits, even as Haqua Team's units set upon their grisly task.

It was too fast to react, however. The bay doors were not yet fully opened, with the _Drake__-class_ being the only moving warship that had emerged; Larry realized all too late that the bay doors could have hid anything behind them, from more Moebius fighters to even warships.

When Falke and Hanada Teams entered the interior, they were greeted with a ship berthing bay, one of many scattered around Nova and recently installed by OMNI in its month-long fight against ZAFT. This particular bay held five _Nelson__-class_ battleships and one _Agamemnon__-class_ command carrier, with four more _Drake__-class_ ready to exit the berthing bay.

Kou's GINN took a hit as the automated CIWS systems of all the ships present activated due to the presence of ZAFT units, a handful of CIWS shells smashing _through_ the left side of the GINN's torso; the exiting rounds mangled its right arm as well.

"Hanada Leader!" Larry shouted, bringing his CGUE close to cover the GINN from an arc of CIWS fire, the powerful anti-armour rounds deflecting off the CGUE's shields. Larry clenched his teeth as the impacts threatened to send his unit spinning out of control. Around them, the mobile suits of Hanada Team and Falke Team fell into a sphere formation, defending the centre where Larry's CGUE hauled the crippled GINN towards the bay doors.

The audio feed connected through, and Kou's laboured voice filtered through Larry's helmet speakers. "The GINN's… dead. Not… -esponding."

"Dammit!" Larry's CGUE fired at a Mobius that came too close, its linear cannon still charging. The mobile armour spun out of control as the 76mm rounds tore into its side, and the CGUE's thrusters fired desperately as Larry's unit grabbed onto the GINN, trying to pull his long-time comrade out of the hailstorm of metal.

"Let go-" the audio feed came back again, static eating into parts of the reception. "Y-… can't do anything-… around you!"

"Keep quiet," Larry hissed, as he narrowly missed being spitted with a linear cannon round. The mobile suits closed in on the exit, even as two _Drake__-class_ ships moved to block their way, escorted by Mobius fighters. Larry could see ZAFT MS outside, trying and failing to get through the hail of CIWS fire that the OMNI craft threw at them from the safe confines of the berth; the bay door frames limited the vectors in which the ZAFT MS could attack from, and OMNI knew that their conditions to the fight were to simply hold out.

Inside the wrecked cockpit of his GINN, Kou gritted his teeth and plotted a vector into the nearest _Drake-class_. "Larry," he said, trying to suppress his wheezing breath; the salvo of anti-MS fire had hit too close to home, the resulting impacts tearing his seat restrains, breaking a good number of his ribs and causing debris to fragment into his pilot suit. Blood and air leaked from his body as he prepared to complete his last task. "Listen… well. Being alive… means being able… to win this fight."

"What the hell are you talking about?!" Larry yelled, his hands busy keeping the CGUE from flying into enemy fire. From the corner of his eye, he saw Rowen's GINN shoot down a missile too close to himself, the debris peppering one of his GINN's 76mm rifle, rendering the weapon useless.

"You… have to be prepared… to step on the bodies of comrades," Kou said, forcing his last sentence out in-between clenched teeth. He grasped the joysticks of his GINN and switched on the mobile suit's afterburners.

The GINN rocketed out of the CGUE's grasp, the mobile suit heading straight for the bridge of one of the _Drake__-class vessels_. CIWS fire smashed into the GINN, but the distance was too close for the ship to dedicate its firing systems to hit it enough times to destroy it outright, and the GINN smashed headlong into the bridge, killing its crew and exploding.

The _Drake-class_, without its bridge, lost its capability to keep its position; the escort warship began to list, and slowly fell towards the side of the bay doors. Its CIWS continued to track, but without a bridge crew to guide the computer's judgement, the ZAFT MS began to stream into the hangar.

Larry punched the cockpit dashboard in frustration even as he reversed direction and threw his CGUE into an attack run. "Falke Team! Hanada Team!" He aimed both weapons at the remaining _Drake-class_ as his CGUE vectored straight for the top deck 75mm CIWS vulcan gun, the 76mm rounds easily puncturing the weapon's housing and rendering it worthless. "Maneuver Sixteen, on the ship's defences!"

"Yes sir!" four voices answered him back. The _Drake-class_ hastily launched missiles as it tried to retreat further into the bay, but Rowen and Aleiya effortlessly crushed the four Mobius fighters playing front escort under a hail of 76mm rounds, before disabling the ship's bottom-frontal 75mm vulcan. Without frontal cover, the two remaining pilots of Hanada Team, with Sato's unit at the front, swept in weapons blazing; the third 75mm gun went down, and without its close-range anti-air defences, the _Drake__-class_ could do nothing as the five mobile suits began to pick apart the small warship piece by piece.

Reaching the bridge, Larry set his CGUE's rifle sight to the bridge only for the weapon's bolt to click open; it was empty. Snarling at the sight of people running off the bridge, Larry sent a salvo of 28mm rounds into the thick glass panels that covered the bridge, the light rounds making a spiderweb network of cracks, before his CGUE unsheathed its heavy combat blade and smashed it through the bridge, dragging it out through the bridge's starboard side. White clouds covered the CGUE for a moment as air vented from the bridge in an instant, sucking out the crew from the compromised bridge, and Larry boosted away to leave the _Drake__-class_ to drift.

As the ZAFT units swept into the berth and began systematically disabling or destroying the warships one by one, Larry let his CGUE drift for a moment near the corner of the open berth doors, and listened as the radio reports flow in. Haqua Team had just finished off another _Drake__-class_; _Zoya_ was closing in to provide base support, and the infantry gunboats were preparing to unleash eight hundred trained ZAFT commandos into Nova.

Outside, GINNs and CGUEs swept the surface of Nova as their fire found stationary turrets and launchers, disabling or destroying them; wreckage decorated the space in-between as the turrets returned fire, claiming more than just a few mobile suits in the process. Within Nova, ZAFT commandos and OMNI security troopers battled for control on the interior, bullet fire leaving scars all over the metal bulkheads.

For a while, the battle swung in the favour of ZAFT with surgical application of anti-ship mobile suit teams; freed from their tasks, the surplus from Charlie Command joined the battle, smashing into the OMNI main fleet from the sides and below them. Larry was one of them, resupplied and reamed with heavy weapons on his CGUE, and driven by a smouldering rage in his heart.

As the fleet battle raged and ZAFT and OMNI refused to back down from each other, a single signal got out; OMNI leadership had ordered a total withdrawal from Nova and the L4 vicinity. Nova thus came under ZAFT ownership on CE 71 July 12th, and would later be reborn as the space fortress Boaz.

**CE 70 July ?, OMNI Emergency Armament Review Board, ?, ?, ?, Earth**

**Afternoon 14 56**

Admiral Lewis Halberton looked up at the officers seated in front of him. Their faces were all obscured in the low lighting, but he had no doubt that he was dealing with the top of the top; the people who ran OMNI, and by extension the Earth Alliance.

Most of them were like him, hailing from the Atlantic Federation. He was, however, also willing to bet that most of them were, unlike him, fervent Blue Cosmos supporters. He didn't like Coordinators more than the average man who had a chance or two to see their arrogance, but genocide as a means of an end to the war was at best, a tasteless, cowardly notion to the Admiral of the 8th Fleet, who had, for months, been engaging the enemy around the lunar cities, and had decided upon a daring plan to even out the war.

"This G-Plan that you're proposing… This "mobile suit" project…" one of the officers said, waving a stack of papers in the air for emphasis. "You think this will give us an edge over the Coordinators?"

"Perhaps not immediately, sir," Halberton replied. "But it will bring balance to the battlefield."

"A prototype do-all frame, a stealth unit, a long-range striker, a commander machine, and a multirole that's specialized to be… well, multirole." The officer set the papers down roughly. "Halberton, do you think this is a children's show of superheroes teams?"

The Admiral clenched his teeth. "Sir, I believe that this set-up will complement the new class of ships that OMNI HIGHCOM is planning to build. It will surpass all fleet-borne power that we can bear on ZAFT right now, and with these mobile suits to act as force multipliers, it will ensure that we can easily strike, with surgical precision, into the heart of ZAFT. If we had a task force of these ships and mobile suits-"

"And using the tried-and-true Mobius mobile armour cannot? Halberton, do not get ahead of yourself," another officer replied. "You're a fleet commander. Not a weapons designer."

"Regardless, Halberton has a point." A third officer remarked. "It's time we adapted to the enemies' strategies. Perhaps building their weapons could result in greater understanding. We already have some captured and some voluntary Coordinators working under us with stolen mobile suits, correct?"

"Use filthy Coordinator technology?" One of the officers shouted. "Well you can take that and-"

"Enough!" The head officer of the review board shouted. All present turned to look at him as his voice reverberating across the closed room. "Halberton, you have your green light. There will be someone waiting outside to begin the development of this new armament."

Halberton saluted and was almost out of the door before the head officer spoke again, his voice laced with the promise of unspoken threats. "Do not fail, Halberton. I will accept nothing less than a 100% positive report every time I ask for it."

Halberton wordlessly snapped another salute, before the heavy wooden doors closed behind him, leaving the room full of predators behind.

Afterword:

_This is a chapter focused on the capture of the space station that would later be known as Boaz; if it seems too long, I apologize, but unlike the other stories I thought this one would benefit more from a full telling of the entire Nova campaign. With the end of this chapter, the events to follow would all take place in the same timeframe as the series._

_Also included is a short segment of the development of the Gundams; chronologically, the research into the GAT-X series start after OMNI's loss at Nova. Lewis Halberton, who later appears in the series as the CO of the doomed 8th Fleet escorting the Archangel to Earth, is the original person who drafted the plan, so I thought it would be good to have a little reference here._

_One of Kou's wingmen, Sato, is probably better remembered as the leader of the terrorists who tried to drop Junius 7 on Earth in SEED Destiny. I thought that having him here might add a bit of flavour to the story, nothing more._


	9. Chapter 9: The Jaws of ZAFT

_Author's Note:_

_This fanfic is to write upon some of the events in Gundam SEED and SEED Destiny that are not touched upon or mentioned in-series, but their dates are listed on GundamWikia and are thus treated as part of canon. They are therefore based upon actual happenings in the Cosmic Era universe, but the events within them are open to interpretation. This fanfic is also an attempt at showcasing a "what-if" of all sides involved in the wars, and how some of the events within the show might have come to be._

**Gundam SEED: Tales of the Cosmic Era**

**Chapter 9: The Jaws of ZAFT**

**CE 71 January 20th, Kaohsiung City Outskirts bordering Taitung Country, Taiwan, Republic of East Asia**

**Afternoon 14 11**

Mendez LaFouze, a Second Chief Warrant Officer of OMNI's Anti-Armour Infantry Corps, breathed out slowly, his body rigid as he surveyed the targets via binoculars, his mind willing himself to ignore the trickles of sweat that dripped off his head and nose, as he waited for the right moment to spring the trap.

Fifty metres away, a GINN OCHER's mono-eye swept from left to right as it checked for potential targets. The green-brown camouflaged ZAFT mobile suit carried a 76mm assault rifle; erroneously named because of its firing system, the weapon resembled a rapid-fire version of a light cannon more than any rifle. Twin rocket launcher boxes were strapped to its legs, and it had additional ammunition boxes attached to its skirt armour. Mendez had heard that the desert-use GINN variant was rapidly becoming popular as a general multi-environmental land-warfare unit due to its rugged design, but to see them so far in the Eastern Theatre of the Bloody Valentine War meant that ZAFT's army was rapidly adapting to fighting on Earth.

While a relatively simple redesign of the space-use GINN mobile suit used by the entirety of ZAFT, the GINN OCHER's many refurbishments include optimization for land warfare. Chief amongst its key points were the removal of its back-mounted main thrusters, reinforced internal components and a lightening of its total armour weight; its footsteps were surprisingly light despite a full combat load, and had Mendez's scouts not spotted it by sight a short while ago, risking life and limb coming this close to the enemy group, he would not have been able to relay news of its coming to the anti-armour ambush platoon he commanded.

Now, as the OCHER continued its patrol along its path, ZAFT infantry walked behind it, the watchful Coordinators keeping an eye out for targets; following behind was a ZAFT Connected Armoured Vehicle, the light multirole tank keeping a short distance behind the whole column.

In the dense forests surrounding the Kaohsiung Mass Driver in Taiwan, in the Republic of East Asia, OMNI's Linear Tanks were restricted in both visual and radar range, and the tightly-packed clusters of trees meant that the powerful tanks could not get through them. Linear Artillery required a sighting option, and infantry scouts were considered risky, while aerial reconnaissance was not a valid option for OMNI at this point in time.

ZAFT mobile suits, on the other hand, could jump-jet across those same troublesome forest patches, allowing them to attack OMNI positions with impunity, or to simply push down those same trees. On patrols like those, with infantry and support vehicles to complement the adaptability of a mobile suit as a probing force, this made any assault against the mobile suit dangerous at best; its 76mm cannon could and would easily demolish anything that OMNI could throw at it.

Mendez held his breath as the patrol passed closer to the position of his first team, their position marked on the tactical display of the data pad that he carried. The side of the forest that he was hiding in was still mostly green, but once over the road, the other side of the forest was blackened from days of bombing, scars from the Siege of Kaohsiung. Very few trees still remained standing, and fewer still remained unburned.

The battle was the first ZAFT assault on OMNI's Eastern territories, this one to either capture or to destroy the Kaohsiung Mass Driver. Days earlier, news had come in that ZAFT's juggernaut of land units were steadily gaining ground against the Victoria Mass Driver; having defeated both the 2nd and 3rd OMNI EUROCOM Tank Corps in the Middle East and North Africa respectively, there was very little left to resist ZAFT except reinforcements from the Atlantic Federation, which would at best be new and unacquainted with combat in the African theatre, and Victoria Base's own defences.

OMNI, having realized that the easy victory they had at the First Battle of Victoria was no longer within their reach, had begun strengthening their battle formations around the world when the ZAFT assault on Kaohsiung occurred. Mendez still remembered the piercing alarm in the Kaohsiung Base on the first day of the attack.

ZAFT had launched a massive beaching operation concentrated around their air power; it was the first time Mendez had seen ZAFT's Infestus strike fighter, a multirole aircraft used to support their slower but more mobile DINNs in anti-air and anti-ground operations. Flying alongside DINN air-superiority mobile suits, the skies quickly turned grey with smoke and debris from the aerial combat; while OMNI's F-7D Spearheads had a measure of combat manoeuvrability against the Infestus fighters with their VTOL capabilities and "viffing" manoeuvres, they were still nowhere as agile as the DINNs, which had the advantage of extreme mobility using a limbed design. The F-7D squadrons had suffered worrying losses as the Infestus fighter pilots quickly learnt how to hang back and pick off the Spearheads with their longer-ranged targeting systems and missiles, while leaving the DINNs to tangle up the OMNI fighters in close-range dogfights.

On land, ZAFT marine forces battled with land-bound OMNI defenders from the Kaohsiung Base; a missile barrage from the Vosgulov submarines had been the opening call to an exchange of fire between the shoreline defences and OMNI's invasion fleet as both sides tried to bombard the other into oblivion. Ultimately, ZAFT made the first landing; a separate detachment of GoOHNs launched an assault on a shore gun battery; while they were ambushed and destroyed by Linear Artillery vehicles, the mobile suits had done enough damage that a hole had been opened in the defensive lines, allowing ZAFT to begin slipping infantry and Mobile Suit teams behind the shore defences to take them out.

Naval combat was another story; most of Kaohsiung Base's supporting naval forces were berthed at another port on the West side of Taiwan, allowing ZAFT naval forces to set up for their arrival as they rushed to meet the enemy attacking from the east. The ZAFT GoOHNs and ZnOs easily sunk the OMNI warships despite their numbers and tactics, and the early loss of most of Kaohsiung Base's supporting naval force meant that the ZAFT fleet could easily blockade the rest of Kaohsiung from naval reinforcements approaching from the China region.

Mendez was there, commanding his platoon during the desperate defence on the eastern shoreline, even as the Coordinators swept away the costal forces; he had led his anti-armour platoon against an MS team, defeating one GINN as it made a landing. Tank fire had hammered its comrades into scrap a short while later, but the ZAFT invaders were too fast, too adaptive, and Mendez was forced to take his men in a hasty retreat as ZAFT forces stormed the beach line and destroyed the OMNI gun positions.

Barely an hour later, ZAFT landing craft offloaded ZuOOT artillery units onto the beach, allowing them to secure a landing area for their GINN mobile suits further inland as they pounded suspected OMNI positions. The battle continued into the regional forests and even the surrounding cities, as the fighting devolved into close-range ambushes in urban and forested areas.

Despite the numbers and technological superiority of their forces, ZAFT was unable to push past the urban areas to open up alternative routes towards the mass driver. With OMNI's linear tanks and linear artillery vehicles prowling the tight streets of Taiwan's cities, ZAFT's mobile suits were easy prey in urban combat.

The forests were a different story, however, and also where most of the fiercest fighting took place as ZAFT MS used their jump-jet capabilities to close in on OMNI bombardment positions. OMNI tank and artillery platoons used forest cover to hide their positions, sniping down the taller mobile suits as they landed or when they exposed themselves to fire whenever they could. The lines went back and forth, with the day ending the battle in a stalemate.

Night brought with it little respite; ZAFT infantry prowled the forests, and Mendez's platoon had been one of many tasked to set up an anti-MS ambush position close to the enemy lines. For hours his men were shot at and shot back, all the while holding their position stubbornly. They even had to destroy a ZAFT CAV that had decided to dislodge them from their position; Mendez himself had to lead a fireteam of his men against the CAV, the vehicle finally going down from a good hit to the side from an anti-tank weapon by another team in a flanking manoeuvre.

Mendez's platoon had hunkered down for the night, and it was another two hours before he was relieved of his shift by the platoon's second-in-command, the distant sounds of weapons fire lulling him into a fitful sleep. Throughout the night, the skirmishes continued, with ZAFT special forces finding and engaging OMNI positions. Some of the OMNI positions prevailed; others were not so lucky, as the ZAFT special forces cut them down and demolished their equipment to pave the way for their MSes in the following days to come.

The second, third and fourth days brought with them renewed carnage. With a proper beachhead, ZAFT aerial forces were repurposed into defensive interceptors rather than having to spread their forces thin with all-air coverage they had fielded in the first day, allowing ZAFT land forces to push further inland with air support.

The ZAFT fleet had used the day to land attack helicopters, more CAVs, infantry, and supplies onto their coastal area, and by the end of the second day even the feared BuCUE units had been deployed, their speed and agility allowing them to close in on OMNI units in urban combat. The same situation was with the forces deployed in the forests; any exposed positions were quickly taken care of by ZAFT land warfare units, and ZuOOTs had been shelling and firebombing suspected positions of OMNI's anti-armour forces since the start of the battle, wrecking vast expanses of cover and tree clusters. The heavy-artillery mobile suits had moved their lines closer with each shelling, and the artillery shells continued to fall in tighter and more accurate groups with each advance.

Perhaps the greatest loss in the next three days of combat was Kaohsiung International Airport to ZAFT forces. ZAFT commandos had stormed the facility on the third day, taking the airport with impunity; their mobile suit forces had struck soon after, silencing any capable opposition in Pingtung Country and around Kaohsiung City that could match them. ZAFT quickly put the airport to use, using it to land troops and supplies in force, and to re-arm and refuel their DINNs and Infestus fighters much closer to Kaohsiung Base.

The loss of the airport was paramount to OMNI. While Kaohsiung Base had its own airbase facilities, the fact that ZAFT also had airbase capabilities meant that they could bring their forces much closer to Kaohsiung Base. With Kaohsiung blockaded from the rest of the Republic's naval forces, and orbital lanes being patrolled by ZAFT space warships, OMNI LUNARCOM was unable to use the still-substantial moon-based fleets for a counterattack operation, leaving the forces of Kaohsiung to their own devices.

The fourth day was a day of woe for OMNI as ZAFT continued to shell their positions. Mendez had orders for his men to hold their positions even as the ZAFT MS advanced, and more than once was his position nearly overran; other platoons weren't as lucky. Of greater threat were bombing runs and precision strikes; Kaohsiung Base threw the last of their air force at ZAFT in an attempt to stop them from blanketing the surrounding positions in bombshells, as well as to strike at the captured city airport to prevent ZAFT from using it as a forward base to hit Kaohsiung Base.

One of Mendez's sergeants from his third team of men had asked him if they had to hold this position for the next weeks or so. Admist the backdrop of jet roars as the last of their F-7D Spearheads flew past overhead on their suicide mission, Mendez had told him that as long as they won, they could advance, and open a path for reinforcements to stream in.

Now, on the fifth day, Mendez wasn't so sure himself. The fourth night had been red as roaring fires fell from the skies and blanketed the city area, from his three years of staying here, however, Mendez was sure that those fires were nowhere near the airport. OMNI's pre-emptive airstrike had failed.

Mendez continued to peer down both sides of the road, making sure that his plan could proceed as flawlessly as possible. As the patrol headed down the path, Mendez activated his comm unit. A burst of static sounded out from the communications device, and almost immediately the GINN OCHER stopped and turned, the mobile suit's onboard sensors suite tracing the unidentified transmission. Mendez saw the mono-eye stop and aim towards his direction, behind a particularly thick tree.

A loud roar erupted from the forest as an AAr-01B anti-armour missile sped from the vegetation, small twigs and leaves snapping and flying from nearby brush clusters in the wake of its rocket thruster. Mendez winced as a sharp burst of static erupted from his comm unit; the GINN OCHER's onboard computer had initiated a sudden signal spike to throw off the guided weapon, but to no avail; the missile was far faster than the effects of the mobile suit's countermeasure, and it slammed into the GINN's torso, throwing off armour plates and internal mechanics as the missile's two-stage warhead chewed away at the mobile suit's vacuum-treated armour, and ravaged the GINN OCHER's internal frame skeleton.

One wasn't enough; another AAr-01B struck the GINN OCHER in its head, blinding the mobile suit. It wildly swung its 76mm rifle around, the powerful rounds going wide; a third missile sent the mobile suit backwards. ZAFT infantry scrambled back as the behemoth toppled with a resounding crash, its major operating systems down for the count and its cockpit bock a mangled mess.

On cue, Mendez's men attacked, bullets striking the ZAFT infantry as they reeled from the sudden loss of their mobile suit. The smell of iron filled the air as the Coordinators bled; some returned fire, but the ambush ensured that only a few of them were left standing to pose any threat to Mendez's battle-hardened men.

The ZAFT CAV turned its turret around, its semi-automatic cannon sending support fire into the direction where the infantry fire came from; Mendez winced as one round found its mark by a stroke of ill luck, the impact destroying the mounted missile launcher from where they had fired the second AAr-01B missile. Men were flung into the air like rag-dolls as the 90mm HE round sent fragments everywhere.

The dull sound of a high-speed impact a second later silenced the CAV as it tilted to the side for a moment; then an explosive roar sounded out as the CAV's top turret was shrouded in a plume of fire and smoke, courtesy of an armour-piercing round from a FM-11 Mk. V recoilless gun, one of ten that Mendez's men carried with them as a light anti-tank option.

Mendez slung his A-14A4 assault rifle as he surveyed the field. Men were policing the ZAFT troopers, relieving those still alive of their weapons and making sure that those that were dead were actually dead. Mendez's makeshift second-in-command, Master Sergeant Lee Hsiung Siong, walked towards him, the FM-11 recoilless rifle that he used to slay the CAV still slung over his shoulders. "A decent victory," Hsiung Siong said. "Those ZAFT bastards got what was coming to them."

"For now, Hsiung," Mendez replied. "Get the men ready to move out. How are those who got hit?"

"Only five of them can walk," Hsiung Siong replied. "They're the only ones who won't bleed out within the next hour; this leaves us with forty-four men."

Mendez maintained his poker face, although inwardly he was searching for an appropriate swear word to use. "Gather up everything that we can use. No need to get rid of signs," Mendez pointed a thumb over his shoulder at the carcass of the GINN OCHER, "we won't be able to anyways."

"Sir," Hsiung Siong nodded, and left to direct the men.

Mendez gathered up his own equipment and checked his A-14A4. With their positions compromised, there was no need for them to stay; they'll set up another ambush, continue picking at the Coordinator's resources and confidence…

A steadily-loudening roar picked at the edges of Mendez's hearing. Looking skywards, Mendez squinted, his eyes reacting against the afternoon sun; a black and clumsy silhouette was in the sky, flying slowly overhead.

It took all of three seconds for Mendez to realize what was about to happen. "Hsiung!" He shouted to the younger man. "Get all of them out of here immediately!"

The black silhouette descended sharply, and from the back of the ZAFT VoLPHAU transport three black shapes dropped out. Mendez barely had time to scream an order for his men to take cover as three BuCUEs hit the dirt, kicking up massive plumes of dirt and debris as they slid a good twenty metres from their landing positions. All three were armed with missile launcher racks, and one of them turned to face Mendez and his platoon; dull _thuds_ sounded out as it fired off a volley of missiles.

"Missile teams!" Mendez yelled into his comm unit as he went prone on the soft mud that constituted the ground. "Find a good spot and set up now!"

Whatever transmission came as a reply was lost in a thunderous roar as the missiles exploded, spraying a wave of glittering metal fragments everywhere. The anti-personnel shrapnel warheads showered the land with their deadly payload, and men screamed in pain and death as the indiscriminate weapons found their mark, shredding trees and shallow cover. Mendez himself flinched as a foot-long shrapnel piece grazed his cheek, the heat and speed of the fragment cutting the strap of his helmet loose and leaving a bloody gash across the side of his face.

"-irst –down!" Mendez heard Hsiung Siong shout through the comm line. From the pain-induced fog that blanketed the front of his mind, Mendez took that to mean that his first anti-MS option was now a collective pile of minced meat.

Gritting his teeth, Mendez ran for the nearest cover, stumbling on the uneven ground and leaving his helmet to fall. One of the BuCUEs turned its canine frame to face him just five metres away, its single eye glowing. It raised a single large limb, and swept it downwards.

The impact missed by a scant millimetre, the impact throwing Mendez through the air several meters. The infantryman flew through the air before landing on the ground; Mendez gasped as the impact knocked the breath out of him, and he struggled for air while trying to get up.

The BuCUE shifted its position and readied another gigantic claw, just as a round from a recoilless gun struck the BuCUE in the side of its head. The explosion from the light anti-tank round barely scratched the composite armour of the mobile suit, but it made the behemoth turn all the same.

Hsiung Siong was standing, his FM-11 recoilless gun propped up against his shoulder, the barrel smoking; a bloody gash decorated his chest, and his assault rifle was gone, his combat vest hanging in tatters over his lean frame. "Over here, you mongrels!" Hsiung shouted even as he set the gun down and prepared to load a second round in.

Mendez could only watch helplessly from the ground as the BuCUE turned towards the lone soldier. "Hsiung!" Mendez screamed. "Run, dammit!"

An AAr-01B missile sped out from behind a clump of bushes, the warhead striking the BuCUE right in its side. While the BuCUE rocked from the impact, the damage was light; Mendez gathered up all of his strength and ran for cover, trying to ignore the feeling of weakness in his limbs. He made it behind a thick cluster of trees just as his legs gave way, sending him crashing into a puddle of mud face-first.

Rolling over, he fumbled for his comm set, his breath still ragged. "Hsiung?" he gasped.

"Hsiung here," the reply came almost instantaneously. "I'm with Third Team; they have their launcher set-up." A pause as Hsiung Siong tried to catch his breath. "Second Team is almost done."

Mendez asked the question that Hsiung had been afraid to answer. "What about Fourth Team?" He said, referring to the group of men in Mendez's platoon that he had tasked as anti-infantry troopers.

Hsiung Siong paused for a while. "They were in charge of policing the ZAFT casualties from the ambush when the BuCUEs came in." Hsiung Siong waited for the next volley of BuCUE-launched shrapnel bombs to pass before answering again. "Only four men out of sixteen made it out alive."

Mendez pressed down on his emotions before they bubbled to the surface of his psyche. "Keep the Fourth Team behind cover for now. I need you to lead the Third Team against the lead BuCUE. It _has_ to go down." Switching comm channels, he decided to lead the Second Team himself. "Second Team, hold your deployment," he dusted himself off and started running, sneaking glances at the BuCUEs; they were turning in circles, firing missiles into the foliage and trees. Mendez gritted his teeth as some of the missiles arced far behind the OMNI line; he would be lucky if their team was the only one to be hit today.

Hsiung had borrowed the radio equipment of the Third Team and was keeping the BuCUEs turning by triggering bursts of transmissions even as a sergeant holding the equipment changed position with each burst, tricking the BuCUEs into thinking that they were surrounded on all sides. "Make your strikes count," Hsiung said to Third Team, as they set up the launcher for another missile shot. "This can't go on forever; they're bound to realize it sooner or later."

Mendez had just reached the position of the Second Team, the men turning to face him and ready to receive their new orders when an earth-shattering explosion echoed across the battleground; Mendez turned on reflex and saw a pillar of smoke rising from where he had presumed Third Team was. "Hsiung!"

"Still alive, sir!" Hsiung shouted into his headset. "Third Team's ammunition pile just detonated; must have been a stray missiles!"

"How many shots?" Mendez asked even as he motioned for Second Team to pick up their launcher and follow him ten metres further.

"Just one," Hsiung replied.

"On my mark, target the damaged BuCUE. Make that shot count." Mendez said, before cutting the connection. "Second Team! Set up here and prepare to fire missile!"

"Sir!" One of the sergeants present replied, and began directing the rest of the men in preparing the missile launcher.

The first BuCUE, still trying to track Third Team, went down as Second Team shot a single AAr-01B missile into its damaged side, the blow throwing the canine Mobile Suit to the ground. Secondary explosions chained through the BuCUE, finally ending in the flexible plating of the mobile suit's neck blowing off in pieces and flickers of flames pouring through the partially-open cockpit hatch. A frantic knocking sounded out that quickly ceased after a minute.

The other two BuCUEs attempted to fire in the direction of Second Team, but Third Team's final shot crippled one of the BuCUEs; it collapsed to the ground, the missile having destroyed the rear of its body, which was lightly armoured. The damaged BuCUE used its fore limbs to drag itself around even as the last BuCUE fired a volley of warheads at Third Team's position.

Whether by stroke of luck or a moment of panic, fate played into Mendez's hands. He already had Second Team take the launcher and change to another position, and Hsiung decided that having Third Team lug around an empty launcher with no missiles to fire in the heat of combat was a waste of manpower, and had long vacated the position before the missiles were fired.

The damaged BuCUE had finally stopped moving; its pilot hatch opened, and a ZAFT pilot clambered out and ran for the third BuCUE. The remaining ZAFT MS bent down; its cockpit hatch opened and a hand reached out to receive the pilot for a quick getaway.

Mendez unslung his rifle and immediately propped himself up against a nearby tree, squeezing off half a dozen shots. The last four rounds hit on target, and the ZAFT pilot on the ground toppled to the side.

The third BuCUE's pilot had withdrawn his hand at the sight of his comrade getting shot, and the mobile suit's inner cockpit hatch was closing when a loud _bang_ rang out, and the third BuCUE went motionless as well, its pilot the victim of an anti-armour round.

Mendez stood up, A-14A4 rifle smoking, as Hsiung and the Third Team emerged from behind a ditch; Hsiung Siong's FM-11 recoiless gun was smoking. "A good burst of inspiration, sir." Hsiung said. "I didn't have the time to get a rifle though."

Mendez wordlessly slung his rifle. "We're retreating from here, Hsiung." he said, surveying the battlefield, mentally counting the logistics and supplies involved that still remained for them. "OMNI's done for here."

**CE 71 January 24th, Fangyuan, Changhua Country, Taiwan, Republic of East Asia**

**Night 21 43**

Mendez took off his beret, letting the cold win blow through his short-cropped hair as the speedboat quickly made its way into the stretch of the South China Sea that separated Taiwan from mainland China.

Kaohsiung had fallen on the 20th of January, two days after Mendez's last engagement against ZAFT, as ZAFT launched a massive assault on the base itself. Not every anti-armour infantry platoon had been successful in their task to harass ZAFT patrols and OMNI had underestimated the forces that ZAFT had committed to the area; Kaohsiung had been unprepared for the size of the enemy force that had shown up on the 22nd of January.

Mendez and a handpicked squad had stayed to the last few moments, defending the base's motor pool from ZAFT commandos as they stormed the facility, intent on catching as many OMNI personnel as possible before they fled into the mountain forests of Taiwan. The last transport truck had nearly left him behind in his own puddle of blood had Hsiung Siong not covered Mendez's back from the open back of the truck with a headshot from a borrowed sniper rifle, even with one arm broken and a chest injury.

Mendez and the people left in the truck had taken the vehicle across the country of Taiwan in the next two days, finally sneaking past the last ZAFT blockade to the city of Changhua, where ZAFT had not yet expanded its sphere of military influence. He had immediately taken a group of men to "borrow" a speedboat, and ordered all of the men onto it. Now, the only thing left to do was to make it to the shores of China.

Mendez continued to contemplate the future. With a substantial number of wounded on board, a barely-alive Hsiung Siong amongst them, OMNI ASIACOM at Beijing would not look twice at their after-action report; nor did it have time to, with the massive amount of ZAFT action at Kaohsiung. Stung, OMNI ASIACOM would have to think twice before launching an attack to retake Taiwan. Mendez and his men would get their rest, for now, before OMNI decided that enough face lost was enough, and tried to retake Kaohsiung by force and numbers.

Mendez looked up as the boat sped towards the mainland, countless stars lighting up the night sky. In the view of his heart however, the stars were staring coldly back at him, offering no answer to the senseless conflict that had engulfed the inhabitants of the Earth Sphere and the PLANTs.

_Afterword:_

_The Siege of Kaohsiung was a battle that occurred on Earth just prior to the theft of the 5 Gundams from Heliopolis in the main SEED storyline, and also marks the first of OMNI's Earth-bound mass drivers to be captured. While not liberated during the conflict, it was returned to OMNI after the end of the Bloody Valentine War._

_This story is an attempt at a different method of telling a military campaign; previously for the Battle of Nova, I tried to write the entire proceedings of the mission from the view on one person. For this, however, I opted for a recollection and present-events viewpoint. Hopefully it meshes well enough. _

_This story also features the ZAFT Infestus strike fighter, a little-known ZAFT aircraft, and the Armoured Connected Vehicle, or CAV. The Infestus was rarely seen in the TV series, if at all, but art of it exists as well as production notes; the Infestus is a nod to UC Gundam's Dopp fighter, but "modernized" with a more believable __and __foldable airframe, and 2D thrust-vectoring engines. The CAV appears a few times, notably in Destiny during the Battle of Berlin, and is a multirole armoured vehicle with the capability to detach its rear, which houses a main gun. Its front section is akin to an APC._


	10. Chapter 10: Fallen Angel's Omen

_Author's Note:_

_This fanfic is to write upon some of the events in Gundam SEED and SEED Destiny that are not touched upon or mentioned in-series, but their dates are listed on GundamWikia and are thus treated as part of canon. They are therefore based upon actual happenings in the Cosmic Era universe, but the events within them are open to interpretation. This fanfic is also an attempt at showcasing a "what-if" of all sides involved in the wars, and how some of the events within the show might have come to be._

**Gundam SEED: Tales of the Cosmic Era**

**Chapter 10: Fallen Angel's Omen**

**CE 71 February 10th, _Lesseps-class _Land Battleship _Lesseps _Main Bridge, Butembo, Congo, South African Union**

**Night 18 26**

Andrew Watfeld, overall general of ZAFT's African campaign, surveyed the commanders standing before him; the electronic tactical display that they were gathered around casted sharp shadows on their features. Aisha, his second-in-command, stood beside him; Martin DaCosta, his new artillery commander and Marwin Autor's replacement, faced him.

Standing alongside DaCosta were Ratha Vostok, overall commander of Andrew's auxiliary armoured forces, Shen Yang, Andrew's air forces commander, and Alan Reidr, Andrew's appointed commander for his special-operations mobile suit forces. Since the month of September in CE 70 when ZAFT had sent reinforcements for his task force following Marwin's severe injury at the hands of an OMNI tank raid, he'd made much better progress. Andrew had heard that the raid and several others were conducted by a surviving commander from the OMNI Second Tank Corps, but he had no way of making sure.

"… and that marks the end of our plan to take down the Habilis Mass Driver, and the Victoria Supercomplex." Andrew retracted the metal pointer he used to point to the locations on the map, displayed in 3D on the tactical display table. Red arrows faced blue ones, representing the standoff that Andrew faced against OMNI.

"Timing will be crucial for this operation. ZAFT may have gotten a staggering win at Kaohsiung not long ago, but our supply lines in the African campaign remain long and difficult to defend from raids. I have no desire to lay siege to Victoria; eight days of constant warfare is bad enough, but with the number of OMNI forces we'll be facing at Victoria it'll be far easier for us to knock out their central command and mop up the leftovers than to go head-to-head with them."

Ratha cupped his chin with one hand, lines of worry creasing his forehead; the former senior materials engineer having a hand in designing many of the composite materials used by ZAFT military vehicles. "Can this really work, though? Attacking a well-defended and well-entrenched enemy with equal numbers sounds like a right spell for disaster. And there's that report from ZAFT command about OMNI mobile suits…"

"We don't have a choice," Andrew replied. "I know the risks all too well, but at this rate, ZAFT's naval forces can only harass OMNI's African fleet for so long before enemy reinforcements start to pour through the patrol net. Our forces can't take a prolonged campaign being spread so thin throughout the equator and Europe; at the most, we can hold key locations for leverage against the Earth Alliance, and capturing Victoria will give us quite a big leverage. We're already lucky that ZAFT's space fleet has managed to keep OMNI lunar forces from doing anything to augment Victoria's already-formidable defences."

Andrew faced Alan. "Reidr, how are things on your end?"

"All done and good to go," Alan replied. The ZAFT commando pilot had led teams of special operatives throughout the African campaign since the ZAFT landing at Gibraltar, and his own team had distinguished themselves against ridiculous odds. "The OMNI forces at Victoria won't know what knocked the wall down."

"Good enough," Andrew said, turning back towards the 3D-diaply map laid out on the tactical display table of the _Lesseps's _main bridge. The landship had been delivered and assembled sometime early in CE 71, providing Andrew with an easily-defensible and mobile base to stage his assault. Before OMNI decided on a way to counter his moving fortress, he wanted to end their resistance at Victoria Lake swiftly.

Andrew's BuCUEs were arranged in groups intended for fast movement, while DaCosta's artillery forces were right behind the faster BuCUEs. Ratha's helicopters and tanks arrayed themselves amongst the BuCUEs for fire support, and Alan's team of GINN OCHERs and BuCUEs, geared for commando operations, were aligned to the top flank of the Victoria Supercomplex. The _Lesseps_ was located in the far rear; he had no intention of forcing it into a high-speed battle where the stakes were do-or-die.

It was a daunting task, and Andrew could feel the pressure of the dead Coordinators who had given their lives to awaken the eyes of ZAFT to the dangers of groundside combat. Even after having ample time to review the battle reports of those that had went before and ample military intelligence, the Victoria Supercomplex remained OMNI's largest military base in the Southern Hemisphere, guarded around its perimeters by dozens of various stationary defences. Ratha and Yang would be hard-pressed to move their Infestus strike fighters, AH[Z]-01B attack helicopters and DINNs close to provide air support to the force without suffering severe casualties.

Those were the least of Andrew's worries, however. The five MR-6 Mk. V railguns deployed in hardened positions around the Victoria Supercomplex were Andrew's greatest concern; those were the strongest cannons OMNI fielded, ultra-long-range versions of OMNI's Linear Artillery mobile vehicles. Even armour from a ZAFT _Nazca-class_ would shatter under a hit from one shot, to say nothing of the ponderous _Lesseps_, and a salvo of high-explosive or shrapnel rounds would cook any of his small units in droves. Those guns, housed in circular underground holds and deployed only during an attack as was seen during the First Battle of Victoria, could allow the Supercomplex to hold out for ages, unless a substantial number of the guns could be neutralized first.

The entire operation hinged on Andrew, and to a lesser extent, Alan's Special Forces pilots. If Alan could not open a hole in the defences long enough for Andrew to slip through and begin demolishing stationary defences and the MR-6s, the entire ZAFT task force would wilt under the firepower of the OMNI counterfire. If DaCosta, Ratha and Yang did not arrive fast enough to reinforce Andrew, then OMNI forces stationed at the Supercomplex would wear down and slaughter Andrew's BuCUEs and Alan's Special Forces. Everything hinged on timing and surgical precision in land combat.

"It's been a long road, fellow soldiers," The Desert Tiger said. "And this is our final stage."

**CE 71 February 11th, Underground Hangar A-19, East Wing, Victoria OMNI Armed Forces Supercomplex, Lake Victoria, Uganda-Tanzania border, South African Union**

**Afternoon 14 11**

Master Sergeant Kaguya Sakamoto tapped the data pad impatiently as the technicians worked on the lone mobile suit in the hangar. It had been enough of a headache for her to maintain the white GINN stationed in the Victoria Supercomplex, and just a day ago two transports had landed with new parts to assemble into a new mobile suit.

What worried her, and constantly gnawed at her mind, were the ramshackle state of the transports, which had come from Chengdu, China; they looked as though they had flown through hell itself, and the crew of the transports spoke of near-constant harassment by ZAFT aerial forces the moment they left OMNI's air defence net in Western China. Their escort had nearly 72 Spearhead fighters, four RF-109E Farseer Tactical EWACS aircraft and eight KC-177 aerial refuelling craft; in essence, the entirety of the 29th Air Wing of OMNI's 6th Air Corps that was stationed in the Republic of East Asia, which were whittled down to nothing as they flew a desperate race through the Middle East, then Suez, finally cutting downwards and braving even more ZAFT aerial garrisons to reach the Supercomplex.

Kaguya still remembered with grim mirth as the crew of the transports blanched at the fact that the Supercomplex had no escorts to offer them on their trip back. They weren't under siege yet, but with ZAFT's deployment of Early Warning Systems and their highly-mobile task forces, they were ensuring that nothing got in or out of Africa, even as their main hammer, the task force under the Desert Tiger, marched to meet the forces of the Victoria Supercomplex.

"Looks like a right piece of work, that new mobile suit," Rilia Karvok said, coming up from behind her. The Coordinator worked as a drifting mercenary, her work having brought her into the employ of OMNI during the start of the Bloody Valentine War.

Kaguya barely tolerated being around her, but in an odd twist of fate she didn't find her grating more than she found her irritating, like a student would to an overly-nosy classmate.

Kaguya gripped the shrine maiden keychain she had kept with her since her enlistment in OMNI on the 8th of April, CE 70. The physical and emotional scars she got from the April Fool's crisis had died down to a dull throbbing, along with her acute hate of Coordinators, and with the sheer amount of work to be done as an OMNI mechanic, she found that she was actually enjoying her job as a challenge, despite gossip and rumours of the xenophobic nature of OMNI.

"What are you doing here?" Kaguya asked brusquely, checking out mechanical values on the data pad. "Go be lovey-dovey with your Mr. Jean Carry somewhere where you won't disturb the mechanics."

"I'd like to, but unfortunately Mr. Carry is too busy in the simulator, so I thought I'd come over to take a look at the GINN that would be mine," Rilia said. "But it's odd to get a real OMNI mobile suit at this time, considering that OMNI hasn't revealed anything about mobile suit research yet."

Like most of OMNI, Kaguya had been kept in the dark about the existence of the G-Project, five mobile suits developed as powerful prototypes for OMNI, until footage about the attack on Heliopolis had begun circulating, leading OMNI to release a terse message to the people under its command. Like many, she was aghast and confused as to why OMNI experimental forces were present at some sparsely-defended neutral colony instead of deep underneath the military powerhouses of JOSH-A or even the Victoria Supercomplex, but no answers had revealed themselves for those questions.

The only things that remained of the theft were a destroyed colony, mercenaries crawling all over the remains and the data retrieved by OMNI commando teams, which were quickly put to use the moment the data reached Earth. And despite the best efforts of OMNI Intel to feed misinformation to the public, rumours of the truth at Heliopolis were spreading like wildfire.

"Don't ask me," Kaguya said, as another technician called her over. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to tend to your boyfriend's new wife. Your GINN," she pointed at the far end of the hangar, "Is over there, so go and make yourself comfortable in it or whatever. Don't bother me unless you're two seconds away from exploding or some other catastrophic disaster."

"Aye ma'am," Rilia replied, her voice like flowing water. "Will do!"

Kaguya frowned and pointed a middle finger backwards at Rilia's overly-cheery reply as she walked off.

**CE 71 February 12th, Victoria OMNI Armed Forces Supercomplex East Wing HQ Building, Lake Victoria, Uganda-Tanzania border, South African Union**

**Morning 09 41**

Rahabinod Ravinan, OMNI Land Armed Forces Major, was at work in his office as part of the Eurasian Federation's Fourth Tank Corps' 3rd Division, his current command since the loss of the 2nd Tank Corps. A survivor from El Alamein, the shame of defeat burned within him, and Rahabinod had been waiting for the chance to erase his failure to anticipate the ZAFT counterattack at the Egyptian city.

He had his orders, and had launched raids and strikes against the Desert Tiger, but each time the 3rd Division had barely gotten away, and with little gain in terms of ZAFT losses.

Meanwhile the ZAFT advance had pushed his forces closer to the proverbial wall by backing him up against the Victoria Supercomplex. Now he sat in the supposedly secure fortress, helping to prepare his forces against the coming storm.

He paused for a while to watch from his office two mobile suits walking down the East Wing's hangar complex, the low rumble of their footsteps carrying clearly even with Rahabinod's office being on the ninth level of the twenty-level HQ building. Their pilots, Jean "Glittering Star J" Carry and Rilia "Black Knife" Karvok, were rare cases of Coordinators in the employ of OMNI.

Despite having witnessed the combat strength of Coordinators himself, Rahabinod was still in doubt of the contributions they could bring to the Victoria Supercomplex. He'd seen the force that ZAFT had arrayed, and if it were anyone else but Andrew "Desert Tiger" Waltfeld leading them, he would feel a lot less pressured.

Rahabinod continued watching the two mobile suits. The GINN, formerly Jean Carry's and now piloted by Rilia Karvok, had been repainted in a desert camouflage scheme that mixed the jagged lines and abstract patterns of dazzle camouflage with the hues of brown used in typical desert-style paints; Rahabinod felt his eyes straining just watching the GINN move.

Jean Carry, however, had his Long Dagger painted a stark white with accompanying hues of grey on its body and arm cuffs, and finally ending in red highlights on its thigh sections and feet. Rahabinod frowned disapprovingly at the fact that the lightweight Duel GUNDAM-based mobile suit wasn't camouflaged properly, but he could do nothing since Jean Carry came from orders given by OMNI EUROCOM, the main headquarters overseeing all operations in regards to Eurasian Federation holdings.

It was Jean Carry that intrigued him. While Coordinator mercenaries like Rilia were uncommon but not unheard of, someone like Jean Carry, who was actually in the pay of the Eurasian Federation, was a rare sight. Rahabinod wondered what had happened that would make him turn against his own people; he had heard that Jean had actually brought his GINN over rather than the classic case of surplus mobile suits getting captured by OMNI as a lucky find.

He forced himself back to his tasks as the two mobile suits continued on their way to a different hangar. It wasn't his business, and he had many things to do before the day ended.

Down below on the runway complex, Jean ran a systems scan on the Long Dagger's components. The mobile suit had just arrived on the night of the 10th, and the technicians had spent many hours assembling it to specification.

The Long Dagger was a lightweight derivative of the Duel GUNDAM-class mobile suit, and from what Jean understood from the new orders that arrived from EUROCOM HQ yesterday, the start of OMNI's mass-production of mobile suits for combat uses.

Despite its simple design, Jean noted approvingly that it was as every bit as up to specifications as the Duel; perhaps missing a few functions here and there, but not something that he couldn't compensate or do without. It was, in essence, his personal Duel.

"How does it handle, Jean?" Rilia's voice sounded over the intercom.

"Far lighter than the GINN, yet it actually has a speed and mobility increase despite having a few less thruster rockets," Jean replied, his voice level. "This might actually level out the war to a stalemate."

"Nice of you to get a new toy," Rilia smirked. "Are you sure you don't want any compensation for this GINN?"

"No need," Jean said. "It was the Eurasian Federation that assigned you the machine as per your standing as a mercenary pilot. Unless, of course, you plan on owing that, in which case you'll have to tell the Victoria Supercomplex Supplies HQ that you want to buy it down."

"How could I, after seeing yours?" Rilia replied lazily. "If I end up fighting on the wrong side one day, I sure don't want to face down superior equipment stuck in an antique. Changing things like mobile suits isn't as easy as you think it is; there're maintenance costs, ammunition, storage concerns… I won't have any money left for new hardware. I'd rather the employer provide the tools; at least I can bargain for quality."

Jean continued to adjust his Long Dagger. "Sounds like a hard life."

"Oh, you don't know the half of it," Rilia said. "Why don't you try it out?"

"It's not my way to live in a frivolous manner," Jean said. "I own too much to go day-by-day."

"Straight-laced, aren't you?" Rilia replied, a frown on her face.

**CE 71 February 13th, Kampla, Lake Victoria, Uganda, South African Union**

**Morning 05 45**

Eight ZAFT VoLPHAU transports flew through the clouds, guarded by three DINN SEIT and twenty Infestus fighters. At this distance to the Victoria Supercomplex, the VoLPHAUs of Crane and Glider Flights were ripe pickings for OMNI aerial patrols and would have been shot down ages ago were it not for their escorting DINN SEIT units, the three modified DINNs each carrying a large radome jammed with electronic warfare equipment with the mobile suits' arms.

Inside one of the mobile suits housed within the transports, Alan Reidr, callsign Reidr Leader, continued to go through the plan. The VoLPHAUs would take them as close to the Supercomplex as they could, before dropping them out. There were a total of eight teams of mobile suits, with each team having three machines each. Five teams operated GINN OCHERs, while three teams operated GINN WASPs.

"Saker Leader," he opened his comm unit. "Is everything ready?"

Grace Sakerfield, his second-in-command and squadron leader for the fourth and fifth GINN OCHER teams, ran through a checklist. "As per your orders, each GINN OCHER has equipped at least one MMI-M8A3 76mm cannon and four extra 76mm ammunition blocks, as well as two M68 Pardus leg-mounted 3-shot missile launchers and one M68 Cattus recoiless rifle."

"It will slow down the OCHERs by a fair bit, but our objective is heavy destruction," Alan said. "This is Reidr Leader to all forces. Operation commence in 5 minutes. Commence final systems check and prepare for aerial hard drop.

Alan opened a separate channel to his commander for the GINN WASP teams. "Koherng Leader," he said. "Are things ready on your side?"

"Koherng Squadron is ready to strike," Fredric Koherng replied. The operation plan called for Fredric to lead the GINN WASPs in a strike against the base defences and two MR-6 railgun emplacements located on Lake Victoria itself, as well as the power generators located underwater.

Since Alan's deployment to the African front as a commando squadron leader, he had fought alongside Grace and Fredric. This operation would be the first where he had separated his team, as a test of their overall capabilities.

There was no room for failure, and no time to wait for reinforcements. Unlike Kaohsiung, OMNI knew that Victoria would bear the hammer blow of ZAFT someday or another, and throughout the Bloody Valentine War so far OMNI had been fortifying the Victoria Supercomplex. If ZAFT didn't strike now while they had the momentum, they would never be able to weather the prolonged campaign for the next year, or be able to withstand the inevitable counter-campaign to retake the African continent.

"This is Rushe Leader to all forces," the comm sounded out, a transmission from the lead DINN SEIT. "Rushe Two has picked up enemy aerial contacts at eighty kilometres from our current position and approaching from our one o' clock. Forty F-7D Spearhead fighters; ETA at current speed is five minutes. It's a patrol pattern different from what we observed previously."

Alan bit his lower lip. Yang had been unable to spare any DINNs for Alex's aerial escorts, and to meet OMNI aerial opponents so far out from the base was a disadvantage to the Special Forces teams.

Alan immediately opened a link to the main channel. "This is Reidr Leader to all special forces," he said, running simulations through his mind even as he brought up a tactical map to help assess for alternate paths out of the impending air battle. "There's a change in plans; the enemy has changed their patrol patterns and we're going to have to improvise. Crane Flight, Glider Flight; take the teams as far as you can, and initiate drop. Infestus squadrons, guard their back until the drop operation has been achieved, then return to base. Do no, I repeat, do not engage the enemy in prolonged combat under any circumstances."

"ETA to Spearhead force's maximum firing range is now one minute," Rushe Leader said. "I'm picking up signs of afterburner usage; seems like they've seen us."

"They weren't supposed to be here in the first place," Alan said, quickly running through final adjustments on his mobile suits. "Reidr Leader to Crane Flight and Glider Flight, I'm ordering an immediate drop. Drop the WASPs as close to the lake as you can, and hightail it before the Spearheads come within range."

"Copy that, Reidr Leader," the reply came. "Initiating drop."

The VoLPHAU transports banked towards their new trajectory and opened their rearward bay doors. One by one, the GINN OCHERs and GINN WASPs dropped out into thin air, letting gravity pull them towards the ground.

Alan was the last to go when another transmission sounded out. "Rushe Leader to all forces, missile launch detected; I repeat, missile launch detected. Enemy Spearheads have launched missiles; sensor identification shows them as AIM-400F Longstriker LRAAMs."

Alan swore as he kept a close eye on the altitude counter. "We still need three more minutes to touchdown on the land, Rushe Leader. Can you provide us with ECM coverage until then?"

"Acknowledged, Reidr Leader," Rushe Leader replied. "I'll cover you guys for as long as I can."

Alan knew that he was asking for the near impossible. OMNI aircraft rarely relied on the radar-guided AIM-400 since the mass deployment of ZAFT's Neutron Jammers across the Earth; if they were using them now, then it meant that there were at least a few EWACS aircraft flying close enough to the battle-zone to punch through the jamming properties of the N-Jammers. Without dedicated ranging equipment and platforms, Alan could only guess that the enemy was hiding somewhere in the clouds.

That, unfortunately, carried the serious implication that OMNI was actively out to ruin their plans. Regardless; the operation would have to go on; Alan just hoped that the rest of the forces could move fast enough.

"Rushe Leader to all forces, I'm detecting allied radar spike." The lead DINN SEIT began to angle towards the VoLPHAU at the head of the formation. "Crane Leader, what are you-"

Alan shielded his eyes as a VoLPHAU on the fringes of the formation took a hit, the missile shredding the transport craft's left forward wing. Turbofan blades fell through the air as the massive aircraft fell through the skies; Alan tried a comm link to the dying craft, but the line was dead. Infestus fighters veered away to avoid the wreckage, and Alan watched as some of the ZAFT fighters returned fire with t their own long-range missiles.

A second missile slammed into the flaming hulk straight-on, blowing chunks off the VoLPHAU as it begun to break up from air turbulence; other missiles followed, disintegrating the transport craft. More missiles shot past; some missed, thrown off by last-minute countermeasures, while others hit the formation, damaging or destroying more VoLPHAUs and Infestus fighters.

"Reidr Leader to Crane and Glider Flights, evacuate this area immediately!" Alan said, his eyes watching the approaching signals of the next wave of AIM-400s. "You are directly in the enemy's line of fire!"

The VoLPHAU transports didn't give a reply, but a multitude of acknowledgement lights winked green on Alan's screen. He had an inkling of what the VoLPHAUs wanted to do, but it was only now that he saw it with his own eyes, as a fifth VoLPHAU transport went down from multiple missile hits.

"They're taking the hits for us," Grace whispered on a private channel.

"Dammit," Alan swore as he engaged the parachute units on his GINN OCHER. Without the VoLPHAUs, Alan knew that the vulnerable mobile suits would have ended up as the targets. Alan and his comrades would have been blown out of the sky without a chance to prove their worth.

"This is Rushe Leader to Reidr Leader," something in the transmission made Alan's blood run cold, "Spearheads approaching fast; we'll hold them off from you guys for as long as we can."

Alan silently saluted. The odds were near impossible for twenty Infestus and three DINN SEIT to hold off forty Spearheads and their dedicated support craft, but every pilot in the operation knew that getting Alan's team to the ground and lake was the imperative. "Shred them, Rushe Leader."

The DINN SEIT angled back into the night sky, the flashes of air combat already filling the black backdrop, as the mobile suits dropped towards the desert ground. An alert filled the cockpit with sound; but it wasn't from a Spearhead fighter that had broken away from the fight.

"Hard enemy radar spike!" Grace said. "Ground missile tracking signal confirmed!"

"Pull flares, and return fire if you can." Alan replied. "Try and stay alive to hit the ground in one piece!"

Light filled Alan's viewscreen as missiles and CIWS rounds lighted up the space in-between the ground and the mobile suits, and the ZAFT forces answered the challenge in earnest.

**CE 71 February 13th, Lake Cyambwe, Victoria Supercomplex Outpost 16, Tanzania-Rwanda border, South African Union**

**Morning 05 50**

The soldier yawned as he continued to watch the radar screen. Ten more minutes to the end of his shift, six more minutes to his sleep-

The radar installation exploded as a shell struck its midsection, showering fragments over the area; the radar tower toppled, crashing into the grassy ground. The hardened concrete bunker beside it offered no protection as a second round struck directly into it, the 200mm round pulverising all that sat inside.

The ground around continued to explode as 200mm shells landed en masse, the heavy rounds destroying the sparse facilities of Outpost Sixteen. Soldiers died in their sleep or just as they awoke, either by collapsing structures, or the fragments of multiple artillery shells landing within centimetres of each other.

Twelve kilometres away, in the cockpit of his own ZuOOT, DaCosta watched the bombardment unfold. He had piloted the machine during El Alamein; although not under Marwin's command at that time, he knew enough to direct an artillery strike force.

"Good job, people," DaCosta said. "We'll continue to hit their outposts like this, and hopefully draw out their forces. That should help the Reidr Squadron and Waltfeld Squadron get through."

Thirty-two acknowledgement lights blinked green, spread out in groups of three or four over a twenty-kilometre battle line. So far, the outposts on the west of the Supercomplex were nearly out; those used older guns and equipment, allowing ZAFT to hit them with the upper hand in technology and power.

DaCosta gave silent thanks to the fact that the multi-front Bloody Valentine War seemed to be befuddling OMNI to the little cracks in their defences that could be taken advantage of, and returned his concentration to the tactical display before him. The ZuOOT teams were guarded by CAVs and ZAFT infantry, but if there was anything he learnt throughout the campaign, it was that the Naturals were surprisingly resourceful when backed up against a corner. He only hoped that the other operation squadrons were doing well.

**CE 71 February 13th, Victoria Supercomplex West Wing Underwater Generator Complex West Wing, Lake Victoria, Uganda-Tanzania border, South African Union**

**Morning 05 55**

Fredric Koherng led the team of GINN WASPs through the waters of Lake Victoria as they traced the signatures of the massive hydroelectric plants that generated power for the Victoria Supercomplex. While they had expected trouble, if there was one thing OMNI lacked in the Supercomplex, it was a makeshift navy. Other than transport boats, Fredric had seen nothing that could challenge the WASPs underwater or even lay depth charges.

During ZAFT's first landing here, they had misjudged the problems associated with a combat re-entry; while they had a high survival rate, they had been cleverly forced by OMNI anti-air forces into an area where they could be picked off either by conventional forces or the ultra-long range MR-6 guns.

One thing the guns needed was a constant and massive power supply. As Fredric stabilized his GINN WASP and commanded his team to spread out and do their job, he eyed the first generator, levelled his mobile suit's Cattus recoilless gun at the construct, and fired.

**CE 71 February 13th, Kayka, Lake Victoria, Uganda, South African Union**

**Morning 05 57**

Ratha Vostok watched as the BuCUEs sped off into the darkness marred by the flashes of battle. "Good luck, Commander Watfeld."

Dusty air swirled across the land as the BuCUEs sped up and left the slower CAVs and attack helicopters behind. They had to time their assault; once the GINNS and BuCUEs were done, Ratha's forces, arranged in a line similar to DaCosta's, would strike at the enemy, forcing them to split their attention.

Shen Yang was on the _Lesseps_, directing the air assault and logistics. Already the enemy was mounting a formidable defence; the low, long-travelling rumbles of the MR-6 railguns deploying could be heard even at this distance from the base, attempting to track the highly agile BuCUEs; Ratha saw one streak of light flare out, a second later splitting into a thousand; two BuCUEs crashed into the ground, mechanical limbs, armour plates and parts flying everywhere, their frames pockmarked with a multitude of holes, as the high-velocity airburst self-forging fragmentation release round claimed the lives of two ZAFT pilots.

OMNI's defences were more than formidable; they were deadly. If Ratha's forces were late, it would end the entire operation.

Ratha reached for the comm unit in the CAV that he was in, equipped with a specialized command sensor suit instead of the 90mm gun attachment or other vehicular modules the CAV could be equipped with. "This is Commander Vostok to all armoured units. Full speed!"

**CE 71 February 13th, Victoria Supercomplex West Wing Third Defence Line, Lake Victoria, Uganda-Tanzania border, South African Union**

**Morning 06 09**

A CIWS turret exploded as Grace shot it with a Cattus recoilless rifle. The 500mm anti-armour HE round struck the missile box of the turret, cooking off the thirty-odd missiles stored within in a fiery display of explosions and fragments. Around her were craters, and a fair number of them were from DaCosta's ZuOOTs during the initial shelling of the Victoria Supercomplex. Grace could still here the distant roars of the ZuOOTs' cannons on other places in the base.

Both Alpha and Bravo Groups had landed spot-on thanks to the VoLPHAU transports, Alpha Group landing on the west shores of Victoria Lake, and Bravo Group landing in the waters off the Supercomplex's West Wing. Fredric had led his team to strike at the underwater facilities, while Alex led Alpha Group in a massive march of destruction over the artificial concrete of the Victoria Supercomplex, built over the lake. So far, they had surpassed expectations, with three MR-6 railgun turrets disabled, and countless stationary defences in ruin as they advanced towards the Supercomplex Central Area. The railguns had stopped firing a few moments ago, and Grace took that to mean that Fredric had been successful in his mission. _Not a bad sign_, Grace thought, _considering that we only lost one GINN in combat thus far_.

Commander Watfeld had led his forces through the defence net and had split for the West Wing soon after, and Grace could see the destruction the Desert Tiger wrought, great pillars of smoke and fire rising into the sky. As for Alan himself, he had led his team off towards the North Wing, leaving Grace to settle things here. Resistance was light; apart from a dozen tanks, she noticed that the West Wing was more for infantry. They had fled before the mobile suits, and those that were foolish enough to try and take ZAFT's forces on had met the fates they deserved.

To top things off, Ratha's armoured support had arrived just in the nick of time, charging through the gaps in the defensive net and spreading themselves amongst the initial attack forces. CAVs and attack helicopters struck out at OMNI forces alongside GINN OCHERs and BuCUEs against the OMNI defenders.

An alert had Grace turning her GINN OCHER around, bringing her face-to-face with a GINN painted in disruptive desert camouflage, with its MA-M3 sword running through the torso of one of the GINN OCHERs from Grace's team. The alert ceased as the GINN kicked the inert mobile suit off, and levelled off a massive gun at Grace.

Rilia sneered as she pressed the trigger. Despite the relative difficulty, she had managed to get the GINN rewired to use OMNI armaments, and right now the availability of the Galebolg 350mm Hyper Bazooka was paying off. "I really have to thank Kaguya for this," she laughed. "But she hates Coordinators, so what am I to do, I wonder?"

Grace flinched as she put the GINN OCHER into a quick step forward; the 350mm explosive rocket-propelled round flew inches over the GINN OCHER's head fin, smashing into a building behind it. The explosion framed the brown-hued GINN OCHER from the back in an outline of golden light as it charged the similarly-coloured GINN with its own sword. "OMNI filth." Grace hissed. "I'll have you return that stolen property!"

"M- my, -iesty one aren't you?" Grace's comm unit crackled to life as the desert-coloured GINN smashed against the charge with its own sword-blow. Momentum carried the heads of both GINNS to smash into each other, a dull metal-on-metal crash that was swallowed in the screech of a pair of combat swords sawing against each other.

"What the-" Grace exclaimed.

"We're both Coordinators here," Rilia replied, the corners of her mouth curled into a thin smile, "Is is really that surprising for one of us to be better at cracking encrypted signals than the other?"

It was then that Grace noticed the markings on the GINN's left shoulder armour. "You're Rilia Karvok," she said, trying to mask her anger. "The Black Knife!"

"I am," Rilia said, her GINN retreating from the deadlock with a quick boost-jump. It landed lightly, with the mobile suit taking up sword stance, its left arm reaching for the Hyper Bazooka that it dropped. "Don't look badly on me for this, but if you blow up this place, I won't be getting the pay check I need."

"To hell with your needs, you damned mercenary," Grace swore as she reached for the fallen sword of the inert GINN that was once the machine of a living, breathing comrade. "Someone like you, who doesn't appreciate the pain of the Coordinators, shouldn't be standing here wielding stolen power!"

"Stolen? Oh no," Rilia laughed. "I got this GINN from Glittering Star J."

Grace felt her breath catch in her throat. "No!"

Rilia's voice dropped low. "Oh, yeah." Her GINN started to advance, sword at the ready. "Your self-pity disgusts me, ZAFT pilot. The PLANTs brought this upon themselves the day they decided to split from the Earth Sphere. A world confused about its future and embroiled in deceit and uncertainty, and the Coordinators were stupid enough to present themselves as a faction that the divided peoples of Earth could unite against."

Grace lashed out in anger, the tip of the sword barely missing Rilia's GINN as it stepped back. "People who abandon their heritage have no right to demean it!"

Rilia merely tightened her sneer. "This so-called heritage-"

An alert sounded out again, cutting off whatever Rilia said; Grace turned, only to see something white flash overhead.

_Glittering Star J-_

Then it abruptly ended as Jean's Long Dagger turned, shield at the ready, as a 500mm round struck it, throwing the lightweight mobile suit off-balance.

"Jean?" Rilia asked. "Weren't you supposed to be defending the North Wing?"

Alan's GINN OCHER landed behind Grace's, thrusters smoking from a boost jump. It had one arm holding a Cattus gun, and in the other, a massive solid axe. Grace could see that parts of the axe were charred.

"I ran into this pilot who was exceptionally skilled. He's standing right behind that GINN OCHER you were fighting," Jean said, as his Long Dagger readied itself; beam sabre out, shield in front. "What about you?"

"Well," Rilia drawled, "My opponent seems to be someone competent enough at the stick."

"Then leave them to me if you value your paycheck," Jean replied. "I need you to defend the North Wing; between the other GINN OCHERs and ZAFT armoured auxiliaries, they won't be able to hold out much longer, and your GINN will be able to get back there faster than my unit."

"You're no fun, you know that?" Rilia pouted even as she fired up the GINN's backpack rockets for a boost jump. Two ZAFT helicopters angled in for an attack run, only to shatter into fire and pieces of worthless material as Rilia fired the Hyper Bazooka at them.

"I might leave some for you," Jean replied, noting the red dots on his tactical display converging on his location; a mixture of CAVs, attack helicopters, and the remaining GINN OCHERs under Grace's command. "Those two are not alone. Go, before they decided to shoot you down mid-flight!"

Alex narrowed his eyes as the GINN boosted into the sky, and his GINN OCHER started to acquire a lock on the mobile suit. "Oh no you don't!"

"I won't give you the chance!" Jean said, throwing his Long Dagger forward in a run.

"Traitor scum," Grace said through clenched teeth. "And using an OMNI mobile suit, to boot!"

Even as Grace's GINN OCHER stabbed forward, Jean engaged the thrusters on his Long Dagger for a jump, the lighter mobile suit easily clearing the top of the GINN OCHER as it stumbled out of balance. Alex swore as Jean brought the Long Dagger's beam sabre down, slicing through the barrel of the Cattus gun; Alex's OCHER discarded the worthless weapon and swung its axe in from the right in a tight circle, only to strike at nothing as Jean's Long Dagger went with the momentum, the mobile suit rolling under the strike and coming out from behind Alex's GINN OCHER.

Grace and Alex both unslung their mobile suit's MMI-MA83 rifles and fired at the Long Dagger, but by then it was already in motion and behind a building.

"I know you can hear me, Jean," Alex said, panting slightly. "If you want to throw down your arms for what you did after the battle of Yggdrasil, then I can promise you your life."

"I haven't regretted my actions since that day, Alex," Jean said. "I saw the truth of the nation, and I spoke out; but the Coordinators living in the PLANTs were deluded by their vision of looking down on the Naturals, and they refused to believe that their future is a lightless one!"

"There's no reason to defect to the enemy just because of an unfounded rumour!" Alex said, his grip tightening on the controls. Opening a private channel to Grace, he highlighted a path through the buildings. "Take that route. We need someone to tangle up the Black Knife, or she'll go picking off our mobile suits one by one."

"Acknowledged," Grace said.

"Rumour or not, you decide," Jean said, as he prepared to emerge into the open. "I'm sorry it came to this, Alex, old friend."

"Don't be." Alex replied.

Grace's GINN OCHER engaged its thrusters and jumped, just as Jean exposed his Long Dagger to fire. Alex charged, 76mm rifle spitting heavy armour-fragmenting shells, but the Long Dagger sprang into action, and even as Grace laid down a hail of 76mm cannon fire, Jean danced the Long Dagger from cover to cover. It braced itself besides a building and fired its M703 beam rifle in a quick three-shot burst, then shot its attached 175mm grenade at her GINN OCHER.

The beam shots went wide, but they were well-placed enough to keep Grace from using the GINN OCHER's thrusters to dodge any way, and the follow-up grenade smashed head-on into Grace's GINN OCHER. Only a last-minute desperate block with the flat side of the OCHER's heavy sword had saved her life, but the impact shattered the heavy weapon and sent the mobile suit crashing into a building, the impact creating a cloud of glass and concrete debris.

With its boosted jump foiled, Grace's GINN OCHER slid down the structure, arms flailing for purchase. Fragments of the MA-M3 heavy sword rained from the skies onto all combatants as Alex got into melee range, only to swipe at air as Jean sidestepped his Long Dagger around the blow in a tight twist, and backhanded the GINN OCHER with its shield. Alex clenched his teeth as the blow sent him sideways into a storage tank, cracking it and sending water spraying out.

Readying its beam sabre, the Long Dagger approached the GINN OCHER, which struggled back on its feet, axe at the ready.

"This is the product of our power, Alex." Jean said. "See? OMNI has also gained technological prowess in the manufacture of mobile suits. This war will escalate, beyond your wildest dreams, beyond my darkest nightmare."

"We'll win before it happens," Alex said. "So please, Jean. Come back to ZAFT."

"Can you?" Jean asked, his tone sombre. "Many men have fell before the weight of their boasts. I am no exception; I've chosen my path, and ZAFT is not in it."

Grace's GINN OCHER dislodged itself from the rubble, and Grace hurriedly scanned the field, finally spotting Jean and Alex facing off. "You dare to lay blame on us, you filthy turncoat?!"

"Blame is a personal viewpoint, Grace." Jean said. "Consequences arising from actions, however, affect the world."

**CE 71 February 13th, Victoria OMNI Armed Forces Supercomplex Central HQ Command Centre, Lake Victoria, Uganda-Tanzania border, South African Union**

**Morning 06 36**

Major Rahabinod had been in the command room since the beginning of the battle, helping to guide the various tank battalions against the ZAFT forces. Not that he was given much to work with; the initial attack by the Desert Tiger and his forces had struck off many of Rahabinod's options.

The alert for the attack had come at a reasonable time, but Rahabinod had later discovered that many of the outpost stations he tried to contact were off the grid, and the power supply was well below the requirements to power the base; less than half of the base defences were still online, and the railguns were out of the equation; the entire base was running on emergency power now. When he checked, he had discovered that the problems had just begun mere minutes before the attack; ZAFT had moved fast, and they had moved well.

It was a nightmare; tanks and their crew were killed even before boarding by the ridiculously fast BuCUEs that had charged past the inert MR-6s, entire hangars flattened by missile attacks. He had managed to get seven tank companies up and ready, but so far it had been a repeat of the Battle of El Alamein.

The first assault had knocked out a great deal of the communications capabilities of the base as well as several of their underwater power stations; it had taken precious time for the troops to start directing the defences, and the turrets and railguns were out of the equation. With the majority of the defences at the East/West Wing defence lines inert or destroyed, the enemy was pouring in with impunity.

"Message from Charlie Company commander," one of the men working the command room's consoles said. "The Desert Tiger has just broken through the last line of defence for the North Wing; I repeat, the Desert Tiger has just broken through the last line of defence to the East Wing."

"Acknowledged," Rahabinod said, quickly highlighting a movement order on his tactical map; the data would be transmitted directly to the unit that he used as the order's start point, in this case a squadron of attack helicopters to match ZAFT's own helicopters. The BuCUEs were bad enough; he didn't want the tank crews to be eaten alive.

That, of course, left the tanks to take care of themselves. The Supercomplex's air force was hard at work fending off the ZAFT DINNs and Infestus; normally they wouldn't be much of a problem, but with ZAFT land forces in the base, they were losing their air defences options at an amazingly terrifying rate.

"Tell Bravo Company and Delta Company to vector towards the Desert Tiger, and set up for an ambush." Rahabinod said. "Get them to stay hidden for as long as possible; if they're spotted, it'll be the end of them. Tell them that I'll try and get allied air support to keep enemy air support off their backs."

"Copy that, HQ," the reply came.

Rahabinod continued to monitor the battlefield, noting with a sinking feeling that the line they currently walked was getting thinner and thinner. He was about to direct another force to try and stem the Desert Tiger's advance when a hand clamped down on his shoulder.

Rahabinod turned behind to see someone he recognized as an aide for the Supercomplex's commander, a captain, motion for him to follow. "We're abandoning base," the officer said. "Quickly, before all the escape craft leave."

Rahabinod was about to protest, but noticed that all around, his personnel were being pulled from their stations. Rahabinod saw another officer speaking into a microphone, telling all units to change tactics to a retreating battle.

"What is the meaning of this?!" Rahabinod asked, tone of incredulity in voice even as he caught up with the aide, the two running down corridors bathed in the dull red of emergency lights. "You can't just go around and tell people to-"

"The Major-General has already left," the aide replied, cutting him off. "I'm not supposed to go around telling other people, but…" his voice trailed off.

Rahabinod then realized that they had been left as bait. "But… why? We can still win this fight!"

"No, Major," the captain replied, shaking his head. "ZAFT orbital forces are heading this way for a drop in a few moments. OMNI had deployed a rescue fleet offshore Kenya to pick up retreating forces, but they can only stay for so long before the ZAFT blockade fleet will regroup to chase them off." He paused for a while. "And no offence, sir, but you saw the battlefield situation… the Desert Tiger has the complete upper hand in this fight."

Rahabinod was about to argue against running when the base shook; even for the Central Complex, which was built with solid supports that were anchored to the lake floor of Victoria Lake, Rahabinod felt that tremble to the bones. "What the…" he said, leaning on the walls for support. "Did they detonate a high explosive under the base?"

"Oh no," the captain replied. "They must have found the Cyclops System under the base!"

"The _what?!_"Rahabinod replied disbelievingly.

**CE 71 February 13th, Underground Hangar A-19, Victoria OMNI Armed Forces Supercomplex East Wing, Lake Victoria, Uganda-Tanzania border, South African Union**

**Morning 06 44**

Kaguya rounded on her section leader, even as he led the technicians to a railcar station that was linked to the railcar system that networked the entire base together. "What do you mean, we're abandoning base?!"

"Orders from the top, Kaguya," the Chief Petty Officer replied. "We're losing ground both above and-" a loud rumbling interrupted the older man's sentence, "-and below ground as well."

"This is the _Victoria Suplercomplex_," Kaguya said disbelievingly. "I thought that the last time ZAFT tried landing here, they got their faces wiped on the dirt ground?!"

"Apparently they learnt enough to try a surgical strike this time rather than trying to knock the door down with brute force," the Chief Petty Officer replied. "So there's that." He pressed the controls as the technicians filed into the railcar, and the door slammed shut. Moments later, the railcar was on its way, speeding through the subterranean tunnels towards the South Wing, which was still relatively untouched. "Besides, the last time they landed in front of the forest, blocking themselves from easy access to the base, and we had forces waiting for them." The older man sat down and sighed. "They're much better prepared for a ground fight this time."

Within minutes, the railcar brought the technicians to the surface, and Kaguya could see just how much the battle had figuratively went south for OMNI within the span of just slightly over forty minutes. The Habilis mass driver was located in the centre of the base; from what Kaguya could see, ZAFT's forces were already all over the mass driver. She saw a transport try to launch, only to be shot down at the rails; it careened off the mass driver's launch rails and into the buildings surrounding the Supercomplex HQ, engulfing the area in flames.

Tall pillars of fire and smoke that rose from the East, North, and West Wing told her all she needed to know; beside the railcar track, a missile turret fired its payload the white exhaust of a half-dozen missiles washing over the immediate area. Even in the railcar, Kaguya found the roar of the missiles too loud to be bearable.

"Where the hell are they firing at?!" Kaguya said. "That's towards the South Wing's First Defence Line! That's where our troops are!"

"That says a lot about how far ZAFT has penetrated into the base," the Chief Petty Officer said, his tone laced with an air of defeat, as the railcar sped towards the South Wing and its massive runways.

**CE 71 February 13th, Victoria OMNI Armed Forces Supercomplex North Wing, Lake Victoria, Uganda-Tanzania border, South African Union**

**Morning 06 58**

Andrew Watfeld stopped his LaGOWE, letting his subordinates continue tearing up the base. While the OMNI tanks were few in number, they were deployed efficiently and had presented a very real threat to his forces, taking down six of his BuCUEs in ambushes in the urban medium-height terrain. That was nearly ten minutes ago, and the defence had suddenly faltered; the OMNI forces went from fighting tooth and nail to being unguided and slaughtered, and were fleeing for their lives. Something was off.

Andrew looked to the side display of his LaGOWE as he manoeuvred the machine, his orange-coloured commander's variant of the BuCUE leaping to avoid a squadron of attack helicopters emerging from behind the headquarters, machineguns and rocket pods blazing as they emptied their ordinance at the Desert Tiger. "Aisha!" Andrew said. "Your show!"

"Ever ready," Aisha replied from the gunner seat behind Andrew. The LaGOWE's twin beam cannons fired, the turret turning to track the five attack helicopters as they scrambled to avoid the energy shots. The helicopters weren't fast enough to avoid the turret's quick-changing arc of fire, and the twin green beams cut through four helicopters. The fifth one turned tail, only to lose most of its frame to a railgun round from another BuCUE, spiralling down towards the concrete ground in a dance of fire.

"Andrew…" Aisha began.

"I know. Something seems off," Andrew replied. He flipped through the comm unit's controls. "Watfeld Regiment to DaCosta Regiment."

"Moving through the base, commander," DaCosta's calm voice came through. "Had some encounters on the road here, but I trust my shelling was accurate enough?"

"Nearly flawless, DaCosta," Andrew said. "We couldn't have won the fight without you." He switched channels again. "Vostok Regiment, Yang Regiment. Status report."

"Vostok Regiment," Ratha replied. "I have CAVs and helicopters chasing OMNI remnants towards the Supercomplex's South Wing, but they've set up some formidable anti-armour and anti-air defences there."

"Yang Battalion here," Sheng Yang replied. "We've secured much of the airspace, but the South Wing remains an OMNI area. Can't penetrate the ground-based anti-air net they have in place."

"Roger," Andrew said. "I'll head over now." He flipped through the allied channels one last time. "Reidr Regiment? Come in, Reidr Regiment."

There was no reply.

CE 71 February 13th, Victoria Supercomplex West Wing Third Defense Line, Lake Victoria, Uganda-Tanzania border, South African Union

Morning 07 11

A GINN OCHER lay motionless on the ground, its head fin shattered and its armour cracked in several places, and a tear rimmed with jagged metal in the centre of its torso. Around them lay the metal corpses of several other ZAFT vehicles; a helicopter minus much of its cockpit, with CIWS holes punched through its thin metal frame, a CAV with a smashed hull, and other signs of carnage.

Grace and Alex faced Jean Carry; Grace's GINN OCHER was missing its head fin, while Alex's unit was lacking a left arm and much of its left-side armour plates.

Jean's Long Dagger, on the other hand, was none the worse for the wear, except for bullet scarring and dirt on its frame. It held a shield with a crumpled bottom edge, and a beam sabre flickered in its right arm.

"Jean…" Alex said.

The Long Dagger was silent as it shifted its stance.

"Reidr Leader," Grace urgently replied. "I'll handle him. Retreat!"

"This is no time for acting hero," Alex replied. "Back off!"

A loud roar silenced the both of them as a camouflage-patterned GINN landed beside the Long Dagger, the light of its powerful back thrusters petering out. "Bad news, Jean," Rilia said. Her GINN was likewise missing ranged armaments and looking as though it went through hell and back, with only a heavy sword left as a weapon. "OMNI's closing shop here; they've got ZAFT forces overrunning the North Wing completely, and they're catching up to us."

"What about the rest of the West Wing?" Jean asked.

"Overwhelmed," Rilia replied. "You wouldn't believe it, but that was the most damn accurate shelling I've seen in my life yet. ZuOOTs, I think. ZAFT was able to soften up OMNI in the area. Then the remaining GINN OCHERs fought like possessed. I took down two, but then GINN WASPs showed up from the eastern port of the Supercomplex."

"GINN WASPs?"

"I kid you not, Jean. That's also a reason for retreating; they've found and disabled a Cyclops System under the Supercomplex."

Jean's eyebrows furrowed. "It seems that the Atlantic Alliance is beginning to poke its nose into other places recently. This was supposed to be a dominantly Eurasian camp." He configured the controls, and the Long Dagger jumped, thrusters flaring to life. "We retreat, Rilia…" he began, but the mercenary was already on her way, the GINN escaping via the East Wing into the desert. Jean hesitated for a fraction of a second, and then continued on his own. She was no soldier, and it was no business of his to care about where a mercenary went.

"Jean!" Alex furiously worked the comms control as the Long Dagger landed and jumped again.

The comms remained silent as the OMNI mobile suit disappeared amidst the smoke and fumes of the battlefield. A BuCUE rounded a corner and caught up to the two GINN OCHERs. "Commander Watfeld sent me over to check on you," the pilot said.

"Where is the commander now?" Alex asked.

"Leading the charge against the South Wing, but from what I heard, it seems that the battle's pretty much won since the escape planes have already took off. There's a massive OMNI fleet offshore Africa waiting to take them in, but that's well out of our jurisdiction to deal with." The pilot waited for a moment before continuing. "The commander sends his thanks for tangling up Jean and the other mercenary pilot for so long."

"I understand," Alex said, setting his GINN OCHER to scanning mode as he took off his helmet. He hated to admit it, but it seemed that today served as ample demonstration that the gap in-between his former squadron leader and him remained large, if not larger.

He slowly contemplated Jean's words during the battle, and the conversation they had before Jean left for OMNI; how the second-generation Coordinator had left ZAFT service after being told that his children would have genetically-transmitted fertility problems. He knew Jean well enough that the man considered setting up a family as one of his goals, but he had no idea that it emotionally affected Jean that badly, nor could he have guessed.

Or maybe it had been after Jean had spoken to that former researcher from Mendel. Alex thought back to a year ago, when Jean had come to him with the news that a former scientist that once worked under Ulen Hibiki had-

"Commander?" Grace interjected. "Commander, are you okay?"

Alex shook his head to clear his thoughts. "I'm fine," he said. "Grace, your machine is still okay; I want you to lead the special forces MS teams in my stead. I'm sure that there's still a lot of clearing to be done in the field, and it will be a long while before we can safely send infantry in to take control of the facilities."

Grace swallowed once. "Will do, sir."

**CE 71 February 13th, Victoria Supercomplex Central Area, Lake Victoria, Uganda-Tanzania border, South African Union**

**Night 19 32**

Andrew Watfeld looked up into the skies, the voice from HQ in Geneva delivering his new orders. "You are to bring your forces up to intercept the _Archangel-class _assault carrier that has just landed on Earth, Watfeld. HIGHCOM orders."

"I was hoping for someone else to handle them, but oh well," Andrew replied, holding the tin mug of coffee in his hands. He let the cool night air blow the fragrance towards him; the past week had seen him busy with the planning for the assault, and he barely had time to drink anything, let along strain his own coffee. While the African campaign had taken the better part of the year, going back to his base in El Alamein would barely take more than two days in a straight flight. "What about the OMNI fleet standing by offshore?"

"Leave them, Watfeld," the commander said in a clipped tone. "ZAFT will be landing occupational forces in about a half-hour's time; the fleet will synchronize their time to launch an attack to drive off the OMNI fleet."

"And if they don't flee?"

"ZAFT Space Fleet Command has a battlegroup running a decoy drop operation over Panama," the commander replied. "Thanks to your swift victory today, OMNI's going to be guarding Panama's mass driver with their lives. They'll want to recall the rescue fleet they sent soon."

"I understand," Andrew said. "I'll be moving out as soon as possible."

He drank the coffee, musing about how ZAFT would have to spend the next few months re-organizing their resources; in-between Kaohsiung, Victoria and keeping OMNI behind their lines, they could hardly afford to mount another large-scale assault.

Despite Andrew's best efforts, he, like all the other groundside campaign commanders that had went before, had been simply given his commendation, and then removed of his fellow commanders; Ratha Vostok and Sheng Yang would be staying with the Victoria occupational forces along with the reinforcements, while Alex and his team had been assigned to a different mission in the Western regions of China. Only Andrew, Aisha and DaCosta remained together, and Andrew's forces had been severely cut. He had been lucky; in-between his push towards Victoria and ZAFT's naval forces keeping reinforcements from coming in, the OMNI forces stationed in Victoria had actually be undermanned.

Despite the 7:1 or more kill ratio they had achieved in the battle, thanks to their initial strike against the unprepared and surprised defenders, the counterattack were well-directed and the fixed systems well-maintained. Andrew had lost twelve pilots out of thirty-four; Alan, who commanded a team of twenty-four, had letters to pen to fifteen families. DaCosta's battalion had lost five ZuOOTs to railgun counter-fire, and four more to anti-armour infantry ambushes while navigating the ruins of the East and West Wing outskirts of the Supercomplex; Ratha and Yang, despite commanding support forces, had their fair share of names of the dead to sort through, both infantry, armoured vehicle drivers, and helicopter pilots. Any more from each of them, and ZAFT would have suffered a Pyrrhic victory.

He didn't blame ZAFT command; he knew how important the mass drivers were. And for his reassignment with a much smaller force, he chalked it up to the reasoning that it was better to lose a small company than risk being overwhelmed during a possible defence of the Victoria Supercomplex; if the stories he had heard of the _Archangel_ were true, then he would soon have the fight of his life on his hands.

"We'll have reinforcements for you as well," the commander said. "I think their experience in fighting the _Archangel_ will serve you well."

Andrew arched an eyebrow. "You don't say…"

"Commander le Creuset isn't happy about it, but he agreed to send down two of the Gundams in his squad anyways," the Gibraltar commander said. "They'll be under your command during the operation to destroy the _Archangel_."

"Fair enough," Andrew said. "Is there anything else?"

"None, except for secondary orders to eradicate Desert Dawn."

"Consider it done," Andrew said, shutting the field radio down. Draining the coffee left in the mug, he set it down and cracked his knuckles, before reaching for the comm unit.

"DaCosta, Aisha, pass the orders down; the Desert Tiger's forces are returning to the hot sands to do a little housekeeping, so the spaceboys don't feel all icky and squeamish when they step into our home." Andrew started walking towards his LaGOWE. "Victoria is somebody else's playground now."

_Afterword:_

_This chapter is a focus on the capture of the Earth Alliance's Victoria Base, which supposedly took place about the same day as when the Archangel was descending to Earth, or a day before. You might recognize some of the names; I've opted not to introduce any new major characters this time since previous chapters already dealt with aspects of ZAFT's conquest through Africa. The story might seem messy, however, with the viewpoint jumping through several different characters._

_This is another major campaign, but this time I've decided to write it in a "co-op" manner; while one character is fighting, the action around doesn't stop, and I tried to write it in such a manner that would bring the reader up to speed quickly when the focus shifted to another character. It's a bit weird for a major fight to finish within the span of an hour, but then again, this is Andrew Watfeld we're talking about, his backstory portrays him as this ridiculously competent commander. (sheepish laugh)_

_The main feature (or one of them) is Jean Carry and his Long Dagger, a Duel Gundam variant for test-type-production, and only pilotable by Coordinators and Biological CPUs. Seeing as how OMNI already has the capability to manufacture Gundams, it wouldn't be too far off the board for them to have already done up blueprints for field prototypes like the Long Dagger. It was missing its Fortrestra Armour; however, seeing that it was just deployed, and the armour was developed in light of ZAFT developing Assault shroud for their stolen Duel Gundam, it would not have that this early into its deployment._

_Jean himself, while being well-known as a SEED-MSV pilot to have experience in piloting machines from the three major factions (Orb, OMNI and ZAFT), had little background information to reveal, other than his mysterious defection from ZAFT to the Eurasian Federation, so I decided to fill in parts of the hole to make his defection more plausible. As for the tale behind the rumours of ZAFT's genetic troubles, that's more fitting for another tale. _

_EDIT: I've rewritten it a bit to match it more with Chapter 1's description of the Victoria Mass Driver, just in case it seems out of place to have it suddenly bristling with defences and yet falling that suddenly to a ZAFT assault._


	11. Chapter 11: Split Second Judgment

_Author's Note:_

_This fanfic is to write upon some of the events in Gundam SEED and SEED Destiny that are not touched upon or mentioned in-series, but their dates are listed on GundamWikia and are thus treated as part of canon. They are therefore based upon actual happenings in the Cosmic Era universe, but the events within them are open to interpretation. This fanfic is also an attempt at showcasing a "what-if" of all sides involved in the wars, and how some of the events within the show might have come to be._

**Gundam SEED: Tales of the Cosmic Era**

**Chapter 11: Split-Second Judgment**

**CE 71 March 6th, KaohsiungBase HQ Building, Kaohsiung Spaceport Complex, Taiwan, Republic of East Asia**

**Afternoon 14 41**

ZAFT commander Marwin Autor looked out of the glass windows of his office. Ever since its occupation by ZAFT forces following a surprise assault earlier in the year, the Driver's schedule had been reduced; only ZAFT traffic and a few exceptions for civilian flights was allowed in the Spaceport.

He had lobbied long and hard for this posting, even going as far as to ask his father, a member with a seat in the PLANT Council's secondary seats, to petition for this posting. He had quite enough of working as a commander of frontline forces, not after having to work with Andrew Watfeld; to someone like Marwin, he felt that having to work with a commander who couldn't carry himself with an air of superiority was like demeaning himself.

The ego-driven white-shirted commander sighed. He had thought that Kaohsiung, being a ZAFT stronghold, would be a peaceful place. After all, while he thought of the Atlantic and Eurasian-borne Naturals as unrepentant savages, he had a bit of hope for the Asian-borne, who were from the third-strongest nation on Earth, and thus, hopefully more knowing of their place in life.

Keyword "had".

A soft knock interrupted his thoughts. "Enter," Marwin said lazily.

A ZAFT black-garbed commander walked in. "Sir," he saluted.

"Get on with it," Marwin irritably replied.

"Sorry to bother you on matters that you've made clear on the previous time, but sir…" the junior commander began. He stopped his sentence the instant Marwin turned his chair around in rising rage and slamming his fists on the table, having quickly learnt how to not be the target of his commander's anger since the first week.

"Dammit! Damn those filthy Naturals!" He shouted. "Chaos and resistance, day in, day out!" He fixed a burning stare at the junior commander. Marwin was not near corpulence by any definition of the word, but a life of sheltered living and a career in ZAFT with the aid of some string-pulling had allowed the man to put on fat in many places; the trembling on his cheeks was evident even to the junior commander, who stood a good metre away. "Well?" Marwin asked. "Get on with it!"

"Car bomb," the junior officer replied, fearing the worst was yet to come from his commander's open display of ire. "Hit one of our transports. Two dead, three injured. The CAV escorting them was damaged in the blast. No civilians; the car had rushed our transports before they started on the highway road to Kaohsiung Base-"

"I've had enough. Really," Marin stood up to look over the facilities that surrounded the Mass Driver, and the cities that extended from the foot of the mountains that surrounded the Kaohsiung Driver to the portion of Taiwan's shoreline that faced China. "Something has to be done."

Something in Marwin's voice made the hairs on the back of the junior commander's neck stand on end. "Sir?"

Marwin turned to face the junior commander. "Time to teach the savages something," he said, a sneer curling the corner of his lips. "Now, what shall I deploy…?"

**CE 71 March 14th, Meinong District, Kaohsiung City, Taiwan, Republic of East Asia**

**Afternoon 14 41**

ZAFT Infantry Corps Senior Sergeant Robert Kalagan walked down the silent streets of Meinong District, eight Corporals following behind him as they swept their sight from left, to right, and above them; their guns were hanging down in front of them, their fingers tense, ready to react to the slightest action.

ZAFT had stepped up patrols in some of the nearer areas of the cities surrounding the Kaohsiung Spaceport, following the constant spate of insurgent attacks against ZAFT forces by the locals, and harassment by OMNI/East Asian Republic commandos. Now, ZAFT armed patrols stalked the street corners, looking for an excuse to bring to heel the Naturals that inhabited the city.

With the recent Siege of Kaohsiung and the subsequent 3-day grace period that ZAFT allowed to the people, those that had fled had fled, and Kaohsiung in general now resembled a ghost town, with large portions of it uninhabited and abandoned. ZAFT patrols through the city wasn't so much for keeping the civilians in line rather than making sure the Republic wasn't sneaking troops through the deserted city, but if the recent spate of attacks were anything to judge by, the people of Kaohsiung had many ways to fight back.

Wisely the remaining civilians kept their windows and doors closed as the ZAFT patrol passed, but Robert didn't need to be a psychic to know that behind every tinted pane and pulled curtain were likely to be angry eyes wishing for his violent eviction from the island of Taiwan, along with every ZAFT soldier on the landmass. So far, he hadn't the chance to engage in combat yet, and each time he had thanked whomever was listening from far up that it was so.

ZAFT's capture of the Kaohsiung Mass Driver at the start of the year had crippled Taiwan's financial centres, and struck a blow to the Republic of East Asia's economy in general. Without their own spaceport to do commerce with, the Republic was experiencing its most violent financial and social crisis yet; China had old rocket launch facilities and a few non-Driver-equipped spaceports, but they were not enough in number and size to support the activities that the Kaohsiung Mass Driver handled on a weekly basis, and disposable launch rockets and shuttles, along with the massive amount of fuel needed for them, made one-time launches and orbital drop shipments too much of an effort to organize.

And so, the Republic of East Asia had continued to choke as it sought to bring relief to its people in space and on Earth. Robert had seen the reports of the Republic having to use a fair number of its own troops on its own people to keep the riots from getting out of hand, and as a soldier he was glad of it; ZAFT, despite its looks, did not have the strength to push into mainland China to contend with the Republic's still-strong army and air force, or into neighbouring Japan and Korea, where it was said that some of the Republic's most outlandish concept research and development took place.

It was sheer luck that the ferocity of the Kaohsiung attack and ZAFT's recent lightning victory at the Victoria Supercomplex had put the Republic on the edge, and led to it adopting a cautious stance; were they to attack now, Robert was sure that the Republic, while sustaining massive casualties, would be able to take the Kaohsiung Mass Driver from ZAFT. And while the Republic might have balked at the idea of running their military to the breaking point just for one key target, Robert, as a member of the opposing force, knew very well that if they lost the Kaohsiung Driver, ZAFT would not be able to gather up the resources for a second invasion of the Republic.

It was a status quo maintained by a chance, one that Robert hoped would hold for as long as the war lasted. Already he had heard rumours about an OMNI task force defeating esteemed ZAFT leaders; first whispers than Andrew "Desert Tiger" Watfeld had fallen in combat in the deserts of North Africa, then a roving ZAFT naval patrol offshore the Indian Ocean, led by Marco Morassim, a man who had been famous for his exploits in naval warfare during the early days of the invasion of Earth.

Robert hoped that those were rumours and nothing more.

A small clattering sound from an alley beside the nine-man squad brought Roberts and his troopers to high alert as they raised their rifles and dashed for cover behind walls. One of the corporals peeked over the corner of the alley wall, placing his gun sight over the corner just in time to see a cat dash down the alley, chasing a rat, and an empty beer can rolling on the ground, away from the cat's direction.

"Seems like nothing," the corporal replied, signalling Robert over. "A cat, a rat, and a beer can."

Robert let out the breath he had been holding. "Form up," he said. "We'll finish our patrol circuit."

As the nine-man team re-formed, Robert's thoughts wandered back to the current situation ZAFT was in. With the loss of Victoria, the only remaining Mass Driver usable by OMNI was the Porta Panama Driver, under the direct control of the Atlantic Federation. Allies notwithstanding, the Atlantic Federation was sure to exact a heavy fee for using the mass driver, in addition to having to manage their own space-lane traffics with those of the other nations of OMNI; this would serve to slow down the entirety of OMNI's logistic and deployment capabilities while ZAFT paused to catch their breath and re-organize their vaunted mobile suit forces.

The only way to end the war was the capture of all Earth-based Mass Drivers, rendering the OMNI war machines in space and on Earth unsupplied, unsupported and separated. Only then could ZAFT hope to have an advantage at the negotiation tables; so long as OMNI remained convinced that it had a winning chance, it would continue to fight, and while OMNI could afford to lose scores of men, even in a losing battle, ZAFT could ill afford to lose even a single Coordinator.

And so Robert was here, prowling the streets of Meinong as a show of force, daring any would-be insurgents to attack. On one hand it was a simple strut, ZAFT's display of their willingness to engage any kind of belligerents; to remind the people of Taiwan that the only reason they hadn't blown up the entire island and the mass driver along with it was to ensure that a trickle of aid from non-aligned organizations, enough for the Taiwanese to survive, could enter the blockaded island.

On the other hand, Robert had heard that the master plan of the ZAFT commander currently in charge of the Kaohsiung occupation to ferret out the insurgents really involved nothing more than dangling live bait in front of the tense Taiwanese population and hoping that the right kind of fish took the hook. Robert remembered his commanding officer saying something under his breath about incompetence during the mission briefing.

Robert's team, as bait, was to try and entice the Taiwanese insurgents into attacking. If it were a street fight, Robert had the option of pulling back to another allied location; if the insurgents were in a building and outnumbered him, he could call in an airstrike by one of the four DINNs currently overhead Meinong, staying hidden in the clouds. A ZAFT command-type CAV and its escorts were stationed on the edge of the district, directing the other two-dozen or so infantry teams that were on similar missions.

The fireteam's walk had taken them to a street in-between two six-story shop-houses, and Roberts glanced up in response to the sound of ceramics knocking on each other. That saved him, as a flowerpot came crashing down inches from where he had stood as he leapt to the side.

Training took over within a second as the ZAFT fireteam scattered, each member seeking ideal cover as gunmen from both buildings leaned out over the windows and opened fire. Robert looked upwards and saw a gunman shouting at the other building, presumably at someone else for knocking over the flowerpot, making it hit the windowsill below it, and giving advance warning.

Setting his rifle butt into the hollow of his shoulder, Robert opened fire, and his comrades did the same. Several gunmen ducked behind windows as 6mm ZAFT-standard rifle rounds blew holes into the old buildings; one of the gunmen who had stood defiantly exposed fell over the window screaming, ending his life with a sickening _crunch_ on the concrete pavement.

Robert was briefed on his job, and while he frowned upon the practice, he had no choice but to follow it through. "This is Echo Team to operation command," he yelled into his helmet comm unit over the staccato din of gunfire. "We've encountered an insurgent harbouring area that matches criteria for airstrike package requirements."

The reply was swift and crisp. "Acknowledged, Echo Leader," the female voice answered. "Wyzard Three and Four will be with you shortly."

Robert had closed his helmet mike when the Corporal that had taken cover beside him pointed at the building entrance. "Sergeant!" he shouted. "Civilians! Running from the left building!"

Robert's gaze snapped from the building's top levels to its base, where the first civilians were beginning to stream out. Men and women ran helter-skelter as the gunfight continued, and one insurgent exposed himself to fire a rocket at the ZAFT troopers even as he was shot. The round went wide and hit the entrance of the left building, killing several Taiwanese and partially collapsing the exit. As the dust cleared, Robert saw a boy of about thirteen, bloodied from a head wound, pull frantically at his leg amidst cries of pain, which had been pinned to the ground by a slab of concrete.

"Shit! Cover me!" Robert said to the corporal, running out of cover towards the boy even as two ZAFT DINNs descended from the sky in short order. A bullet grazed the ZAFT soldier at the side of his helmet, and Robert temporarily blacked out even as the impact snapped his head backwards. "Halt the airstrike!" Robert yelled into his helmet mike as he barely avoided sprawling on the ground.

"Sergeant!" the corporal yelled. He took a step out, but a burst of fire forced him back into cover. "No!"

Ignoring the corporal, Robert dived to the ground as a burst of fire slashed through the air where his head had been moments ago; had those rounds hit, Robert would be on the ground, his brains leaking out from holes on the other side of his head. He scrambled for the boy, who by now was cowering as the insurgents from both buildings continued to fire directly at Robert. Two ZAFT corporals took the chance to snipe a few insurgents from their window perches, temporarily causing the rest to duck back in.

The comm channel crackled to life. "Wyzard Three to Echo Leader. My radar is picking up targeting warnings on Wyzard Four, I cannot stay here any longer!"

Landing on the shop-houses, one DINN pulled a Cattus M68 recoiless rifle out of a carrying case and levelled it the roof of the building. On the other building, a second DINN landed, trying to steady its own Cattus; the lightweight mobile suit was unsuited to carry such a heavy weapon, and was straining its operation parameters to do so.

Robert slung his weapon on his back and gripped the brick slab that had landed on the boy's leg, ignoring the look of surprise he gave to Robert. "Hold on!" he said desperately as he strained his genetically-optimized muscles to the maximum, trying to lift the slab enough for the boy to scramble out.

Despite common rumour-mongering, Coordinators were not supermen; their genes were optimized for maximum growth and development of a human's natural abilities, but not to the point where their bodies could defy the laws of conventional physics. Dust shook from the slab as veins on Robert's neck throbbed against his skin, and his arms glistened with sweat as they strained against a load that would have taken two Coordinators to lift. "Come on!"

"Sergeant!" A corporal screamed form across the street. "The insurgents from the building on your side are evacuating! They aren't firing back!"

Robert cursed and pulled even harder; the boy felt a loosening of pressure around his leg, and while he was injured, he was aware enough that he scrambled away from the slab, gritting his teeth and dragging his broken leg along with him. Robert let go of the slab as it slammed down onto the earth, just as several insurgents on the opposite building popped up from hiding, and unleashed a salvo of rockets straight at Wyzard Four.

"Firing!" The comm crackled as Wyzard Three's terse warning message ended. The DINN fired its Cattus gun, and the shell made it through three levels of concrete before exploding in a massive overpressure wave of fragments and heat, throwing fire everywhere; Robert had a second to glimpse the silhouettes of six men standing by their windows, wreathed in fire before they disappeared into the inferno.

The rocket wave fired by the insurgents missed their mark as Wyzard Four's DINN took off first, before firing a round into the building that the mobile suit had landed on, the very same building that Robert was right beside. "Echo Leader!" The impact threw the DINN off-course as it attempted to gain altitude in the event of an unexpected anti-air attack. "Brace for impact!"

Robert leapt at the boy, the two of them going to ground as the deafening _boom_ of the explosion encompassed everything. He hugged the boy closer to him and gritted his teeth as the world went dark and silent; only Robert's sense of touch remained, the shockwaves vibrating through the ground and tearing at his rifle, armoured vest, helmet, everything.

Then the sound stopped, and everything went silent. After what seemed like a minute had passed, Robert slowly opened his eyes. To his immense relief, firstly, his eyeballs still remained intact, and secondly, the boy stirred; it seemed that he had passed out during the explosion of the Cattus' round, but other than his previous injuries, the massive shockwave hadn't done anything else. Being near the entrance had saved both of them; the interior had collapsed entirely.

The building and the insurgents housed inside, however, were a different story. Outwardly the building still retained its shape, although every wall was cracked and every window shattered. Inside, no semblance of levels remained, everything having collapsed with the shockwave. The bodies, or what passed as the mangled remains of nearly fifty insurgents, were strewn about in different shapes and sizes amongst the rubble.

Robert shook his head to clear the disorientation. He tapped the right side of his head in mild annoyance as his hearing on that side remained silent; it was likely that he would have to spend a few days away from his men so that ZAFT doctors in Kaohsiung could repair his inner ear.

"Sergeant!" A corporal hurried over, his voice partially muffled by the roar of the DINNs' jet engines as the mobile suits returned to the skies. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine, treat the boy," Robert replied, shakily getting to his feet. Already, four more fireteams of ZAFT infantry were on scene to secure the area, and they were taking up positions in the nearby buildings to secure high points of observation. Judging from the frantic screams but lack of gunfire, Robert guessed, with some measure of relief, that the buildings around the combat site housed honest-to-goodness civilians. "Can't say I approve of this plan, though."

"Sergeant?" the corporal asked.

"Look at them," Robert said, tilting his head towards the group of civilians that had escaped, some of which were edging back towards the building. The presence of ZAFT soldiers were keeping them back so far, but Robert knew that emotions was a powerful thing, and that there had to be relatives of the dead buried amongst the rubble from the stray RPG. "If they hadn't run out, what would have happened? We were lucky the boy happened to be the last of the civilians."

"I understand, Sergeant," the corporal said, sealing the bandage on the boy's head and getting to work on his leg. The boy winced as the corporal applied a local painkiller with an injector and set about with a splint for his leg.

"I'll have to speak with someone about this method of insurgent hunting. It has to change; this is beyond simple heavy-handed violence," Robert said, hobbling two steps away before the boy called out to him.

"Erm… Thank you… sir." The boy said in halting English.

Robert stood silent for a while, before returning a crooked smile and dredging up old memories of foreign –language classes during his days as a student. "No problem," he replied in Mandarin as best as he could, trying to hide the fact that his knowledge of the language was, at best, mediocre.

"Erm.. why?" The boy asked, this time in fluent Mandarin. "It was a very dangerous thing to do."

Robert was silent for a while as he wondered why himself. Certainly, he had a son, about four years younger than the boy, but that wasn't the main reason. When the answer hit him, he smiled; a memory of his son asking him on the eve of his departure in CE70 November, asking him if he was going to be a hero. He had remembered telling his son yes.

"Because we're both human," Robert replied in choppy Mandarin, even as the first civilians began returning, amongst them a woman with a worried face who made straight for the boy. "And humans help each other."

_Afterword:_

_A light chapter dealing with a small period of life in a region occupied by ZAFT; nothing much to put here except reference various points of the Bloody Valentine War._ _Fictional infantry ranks for the ZAFT soldiers are used here for easy identification; otherwise, ZAFT doesn't seem to put much importance on the role of infantry. Not that they can afford to deploy that many realistically, considering it'll be a massive waste of talent and efforts..._


	12. Chapter 12: Down the Dark Path

_Author's Note:_

_This fanfic is to write upon some of the events in Gundam SEED and SEED Destiny that are not touched upon or mentioned in-series, but their dates are listed on GundamWikia and are thus treated as part of canon. They are therefore based upon actual happenings in the Cosmic Era universe, but the events within them are open to interpretation. This fanfic is also an attempt at showcasing a "what-if" of all sides involved in the wars, and how some of the events within the show might have come to be._

**Gundam SEED: Tales of the Cosmic Era**

**Chapter 12: Down the Dark Path**

**CE 71 April 2nd, New York, United States of the Atlantic Zone, Atlantic Federation**

**Morning 06 15**

Karn Droven, historian of seventy years of age, sat down on the park bench, rubbing his hands together for warmth in the cool morning air. While the city of New York would warm up quickly during the day, right now a slight mist still hung in the air; traffic was sparse since the April Fool's Crisis, and the road to recovery was long and harsh.

It wasn't like that a year ago; at least, not while the city was awake for twenty-four hours a day. Recent events had drastically changed the world.

As a historian, and one lucky enough to be born on the "Cosmic Year"; that is, the year that was recorded as CE 1, Karn Droven had seen the world change many times since the beginning of the new calendar. He had seen the world make the painful shift from over-reliance on fuels to other energy sources, the widespread adoption of nuclear power for commercial purposes, and the daunting task of placating those that were against it. He had seen the world's technology move, regress, and move again.

He had seen many things throughout the course of his life. The Reconstruction War, the conflict that was only matched by the current Bloody Valentine War, was a memory that would be burnt into his young mind at that time; negotiation deals for fuel rights with Middle Eastern nations had soured, and China, in a move that shocked the world, moved in to claim all of the Middle East as its own, so as to feed its own people and country. The Western nations, as the newly-formed Atlantic and Eurasian Federation, tried everything they could to dislodge China, but in the very end it had taken Russia wading into the melee and flattening Kashmir, the central-land of the conflict, with nuclear weapons, to end the conflict.

Not wanting to end themselves, the world entered a massive phase of peace negotiations; alliances were sealed and deals were strengthened, so as to prevent a world war from ever happening again. The world, hand in hand, assured each other that conflict would never be the alternative, and even as the people starved, the nations searched for a solution to the overpopulation that plagued the world.

The answer came: space, the final frontier. As the world governments summoned their remaining strength to push jobs and men into the void beyond to kick-start their road to advancement and recovery, the rest of the world moved with them. With a year, nations had pledged their all to the space advancement program, and lunar cities and space stations were constructed in haste one after another. Resources began to arrive as exploration teams set forth for months on end to claim and return with minerals from the Asteroid Belt, with some dragging entire asteroids back, so rich were the rocks that years were spent mining them clean.

As Karn grew, so did the space industry, and finally the plan to establish a route to Jupiter. Then came the fateful day; the announcement of the existence of Coordinators, by the man whom the world saw as a natural-born genius, George Glenn.

Despite being only fifteen at that time, Karn thought that it was mightily irresponsible for George to pull a move such as that. As the First Coordinator departed for Jupiter, the world erupted into confusion and turmoil. The hardworking spirit and dogged determination of the world's peoples vanished as they turned to each other and began questioning about the very meaning of what it was to be a Coordinator.

Just knowing what made a Coordinator a Coordinator was not enough. Soon, achievements and milestones were being questioned and scrutinized. Men were cast into suspicion for tasks that they accomplished, for the opinion that being a Coordinator was an unfair advantage was rapidly taking hold in all societies. Some began asking how they could also become Coordinators.

And as Karn witnessed while out on celebration for his sixteenth birthday, as a group of men mercilessly gunned down a well-known geneticist outside of his own workplace, there were also men who took it upon themselves to erase what they saw as the beginning of the bastardization of the human race.

Emergency measures, bans, restrictions and regulations were taken and the world governments announced that they would not let this revelation phase them nor let it get out of hand, but behind doors, even the leaders of the world were stumped… and the sharper ones amongst them were already asking themselves if the power of the Coordinators could be harnessed for the good of the world… no, for now, the good of their nation would have to do. Yes, just their nation.

But the world leaders were one step too late. The people had grown fat on their successes after the Reconstruction War, and some, thinking themselves above the law, had already begun to have under-the-table modifications for their children, to turn them into the first generation of Coordinators. After all, they had money, power, and prestige. It was unthinkable for there to be an even higher group of people that could erase all of their hard work and legacies with the sheer advantage afforded by genetics.

And so, as the world settled into a cautious state, slowly tending to the numerous space stations and lunar cities that fuelled their industries, the new Coordinators came into the world. And all hell broke loose again as they grew to adulthood; these men and women, talented in their fields to miraculous, often ridiculous levels, to the point where their skills seemed of immortal origins from the layman's point of view. The truth had to get out; fortunately, George Glenn's timely transmission of fossilized extraterrestrial life found on Jupiter threw the world into greater turmoil, and as he took the return trip, the looming issue of the Coordinators took backseat, for a while.

George Glenn's return shattered the world's state. Genetic modifications were small-time in the face of the presence of extraterrestrial life on a planet that they were literally next-door neighbours with; when analysis of the Jupiter fossil, later known as Evidence 01, revealed it to be less than 1000 years of age, the world refocused on the void, and left the Coordinators behind. Even the infamous Palestine Conference, a sudden meeting of the world's religious leaders, failed to incite the anti-Coordinator fervour that had gripped the world prior to the announcement of George's discovery; in a short time, Coordinator enhancements even became welcome; after all, what was so threatening about men that could help advance the world, when put alongside the possibility of dialogue with otherworldly sources? Thousands of people flocked to have their future children modified for the greatest potential that they could have, and the ranks of those who were to be Coordinators swelled to millions within a handful of years.

That didn't affect much of Karn's life, however. The world was fascinated with Evidence 01 to the extent where human-Coordinator relations were amiable, something that Karn had regretted did not last till this day. George Glenn, spearheading the research of the fossil from Jupiter, had the world's attention, and the Coordinators simply became a side interest for some. New space colonies were constructed, groundwork for the industrial space colonies that would later be known as the PLANTs were laid, sponsored by the various nations of Earth, and the world entered a second phase of rapid development. Military technology leapt forward by miles; the Atlantic Federation and Eurasian Federation had working space fleets within a handful of years, supported by massive lunar bases. Space piracy slowed to a trickle, and the world's future looked bright.

And that was when the downhill ride began.

The Coordinator social problem was one that was ignored, not solved. Even the heat of excitement at Evidence 01 could only hide the problem for so long; when the first generation of Coordinators began to bear their own children, to continue their legacy and work, those who remained with untouched genes began to question whether it was right of the Coordinators to do so. "Natural" and "Coordinator"; the gulf between these two words was first established in the 40s of the Cosmic Era.

Many of the Coordinators, seeking challenges and new hopes, had moved to the site of the PLANTs at Lagrange Point 5. The PLANTs, originally built as super-large factory complexes, were responsible for many of the Cosmic Era's key innovations; the blueprints for the Eurasian Federation's famed MR-6 ultra-long-range railgun weapon were first drawn up in a PLANT, and the Atlantic Federation's sudden leap in medicinal science was also partially due to the contribution of the PLANTs. Those contributions, however, did not dissuade the radicals of the world from planning and carrying out terrorist acts in the name of cleansing the human gene pool, and pressure began to mount on both sides as the Coordinators demanded that the nations that sponsored the building of the PLANTs do something about it.

Things finally reached boiling point with the poisoning of over four hundred Coordinators and their food, killing eighty of them. The Coordinators demanded that they be allowed to produce their own food for security reasons, and the nations of Earth challenged the Coordinators' rights to have a hand in their matters, living in the PLANTS built with the money of those left on Earth. The lines were drawn, and the world started to crumble.

The Coordinators first formed their own political party, then their own government organization of a PLANT Supreme Council, despite the protests of the sponsor states. Things only got worse with the assassination of George Glenn and the resurgence of the Type-S influenza, now the Type-S2; Karn remembered that well, since he lost his grandfather to the last vestiges of the virus during his younger days, at the end of the Reconstruction War. Angry rumours that the Coordinators had creased the S2 to avenge George's death spread like fire; the Naturals resented the Coordinator's pride, strength and perceived arrogance at trying to distance themselves from the Earth, and the Coordinators seethed at the nerve of the Naturals in trying to leash them to the governments of the world. Chaos reigned; a total ban was enacted on Earth against genetic modification, causing a slow resurgence in genetic diseases; the L4 Mendel Colony, one of the leading places in genetic science, was attacked, leading to the loss of valuable research material; and the Atlantic Federation, the greatest sponsor of the PLANTs, entered a massive militarization, moving their space fleets uncomfortably close to the PLANTs to announce their intentions.

The PLANTs finally had enough when a terrorist attack in CE 63 damaged the colony clusters' energy production facilities; despite protests by the PLANTs to halt work for repairs, the sponsor nations pushed for continued work, and loss of life occurred as some of the PLANTs experienced catastrophic environmental control failure as what precious power was directed towards factory work, under the watch of the Atlantic Federation space fleet. The facilities were eventually repaired, but by then the Coordinators had enough; arming themselves with their iconic creations, the Mobile Suit, they, as ZAFT, the military arm of the PLANTs, struck out and chased away the Atlantic Federation fleet, shocking the world and angering the more radical Naturals with their daring.

From there on, Karn bore witness to the avalanche of events; the Mendel Incident ending with the abandonment of the colony, the destruction of the United Nations Council at the Bombing of Copernicus, the complete stoppage of PLANT-produced products to the nations of Earth that needed them, and finally, the Bloody Valentine Incident that pushed the skirmish off the edge into full-blown war. ZAFT's return blow had been particularly heavy-handed; for months on end entire nations went by with hours, sometimes minutes of electrical power gained from non-nuclear sources. The situation was alleviated, to a certain degree, with the mass construction of solar power facilities, aided by careful weather manipulation, but even then, electricity was, and still remained, a rationed resource.

Earth underwent changes as well; out of the ashes of the leaderless United Nations Army rose Oppose Militancy and Neutralize Invasion, or OMNI, the military arm of the new alliance of Earth nations, the Earth Alliance. Unlike the UN Army, which worked with loans from member nations, OMNI had its own core group of soldiers, people who were dedicated not to one nation but the command of all allied forces for the entirety of Earth and controlled space, and only supplemented by the armies of the member nations should the need call for it. It was not uncommon to see Atlantic Federation or the troops of other nations fighting alongside the white-garbed soldiers of OMNI.

While its goal was the protection of Earth and the retaking of the PLANTs from the Coordinators that had usurped control of the colonies from their parent nations, Karn often questioned the use of OMNI troops for other purposes. He saw the annexing of the Porta Panama mass driver, where the Atlantic Federation put the United States of South America underfoot for daring to ally themselves with the PLANTs. He saw the riots of Europe, where one by one dissidents against the war effort were silenced. He saw the Republic of East Asia pledge itself to the Earth Alliance cause after the April Fool's Crisis, in the name of those who had died when the massive power failure had caused the collapse of the construction of its floating city, Sector Babylon.

The war continued to escalate as the Naturals clashed against the Coordinators; the battle of Yggdrasil, which destroyed the iconic space station; the First Battle of Jachin Due, where the Coordinators paid back their defeat at Yggdrasil and Victoria with a spectacular defence; the establishment of Carpentaria Base and the resulting ZAFT offensive into the seas of Earth; the Gibraltar Base's birth and the ZAFT offensive into Europe and Africa; the lunar campaigns coming to an end with the ZAFT retreat at the Grimaldi Front; the blow to the Republic of East Asia with the loss of their space station Nova, and later the fall of Kaohsiung; and most recently, the sacking of the Victoria Supercomplex in the Second Battle of Victoria, and the loss of the Habilis Mass Driver.

OMNI was more than being just crippled by ZAFT, they were being overran. Yet, Karn felt that behind ZAFT's confident exterior was an undercurrent of worry; despite ZAFT's power, they had neither the numbers to spare nor the capabilities to storm the remaining strongholds of Earth; Panama, despite lacking the advanced defensive capabilities of the Victoria Supercomplex thanks to its uneven terrain and small space, had remained untargeted partially thanks to the space force and navy of the Atlantic Federation, which kept watch around the area, protecting the last OMNI-controlled mass-driver. Day in, day out, Karn saw the news of the dozens of skirmishes that occurred on the European Front; OMNI HIGHCOM at Geneva was a rallying point against the ZAFT advance into central Europe, and the planned relocation of the OMNI command staff to JOSH-A, a military facility in Alaska, would put the head of the snake further out of ZAFT's reach on the ground. Africa was too large to take and hold, and OMNI continued to string token troops along the warfront to pressure ZAFT into dedicating more forces in holding the Victoria Supercomplex and the Habilis Mass Driver, forcing the enemy lines thin.

In space, the inability of ZAFT to shut down the lunar bases meant that OMNI could continue to run harassing operations; they were little and often resulted in the destruction of the picket OMNI force, but it was a constant reminder of the thorn in the sides of ZAFT, pressuring them into keeping on their toes even on their own home ground. The memory of the Bloody Valentine Incident remained a raw wound even after a year, and OMNI knew that ZAFT would not dare risk a lapse in their defence of the PLANTs ever again; using that fact, they continued to test the mettle of ZAFT's vaunted space fleets.

And then there were the rumours. Karn had acquired many contacts throughout his life, and from what he had heard of Africa, rumours abounded of an OMNI warship that had evaded destruction in space and had fought its way out of ZAFT territory on Earth, claiming the lives of many of ZAFT's finest during combat. Karn hadn't seen the ship nor had the chance to ascertain the rumours himself, but when footage of the recent disturbance at Heliopolis was broadcast to the world of an OMNI warship escaping ZAFT pursuers, he couldn't help but wonder if the world was, like so many times before, on the precipice of another great change.

Whether it was a change for the better or worse, Karn couldn't tell, but one thing he knew; his job was as the eyes for the future, to record down the tumultuous history of the Cosmic Era until the day he died, where future generations would continue his work.

He would not let personal judgment cloud his decisions, unlike some of his peers. He would not let the opinions of others affect his thoughts, like how the Atlantic Federation had began to pressure others in their support of a more throughout, more violent war campaign against ZAFT.

All for the sake of making sure the next generation would not make the same mistakes of this era.

_Afterword: __I had no idea I would stalemate so badly I would do a historical recap. Between Victoria and the upcoming JOSH-A, not much happens in the canon that isn't about the _Archangel_, which isn't within my scope of writing, so I decided to use this to straighten out some of the things I've been writing about._


	13. Chapter 13: The Line Drawn

_Author's Note:_

_This fanfic is to write upon some of the events in Gundam SEED and SEED Destiny that are not touched upon or mentioned in-series, but their dates are listed on GundamWikia and are thus treated as part of canon. They are therefore based upon actual happenings in the Cosmic Era universe, but the events within them are open to interpretation. This fanfic is also an attempt at showcasing a "what-if" of all sides involved in the wars, and how some of the events within the show might have come to be._

**Gundam SEED: Tales of the Cosmic Era**

**Chapter 13: The Line Drawn**

**CE 71 May 8th, JOSH-A First Naval Defence Sector, JOSH-A, Alaska, Atlantic Federation**

**Afternoon 14 19**

The Infestus fighter spiralled as it took a steel-rending hit to its left side, the missile tearing out its left wings and engine. The ZAFT fighter trailed thick black smoke as it crashed into the sea, the spray of water from its impact vanishing seconds later in a blinding explosion.

The light from the blast, however, was but a small distraction against the backdrop of the sky, which was alight with tracer fire and missile trails from nearly two hundred warships. The remaining two Infestus fighters pulled away, none of them carrying the necessary armaments to avenge their wingmate.

Commander Zanaya Helviya, of the Eurasian Federation Third Fleet's _Arkansas_-class cruiser _Potemkin_, remained impassive to the fact that her ship had gained another kill; in the waters off JOSH-A, OMNI HIGHCOM's newest stronghold after Geneva HQ, elements of the Eurasian Federation's Second, Third, and Fourth Fleet under the command of Geneva HQ defended the seas alongside the Atlantic Federation's Ninth Fleet, against the ZAFT attack that had started about three hours ago.

While OMNI wasn't caught completely unprepared, their commanders were certainly shocked at the ferocity of the assault; ZAFT had deployed nearly four divisions' worth of assets to the area for the assault, for once outnumbering the OMNI defenders. It made sense, considering that JOSH-A was even more of a fortress than the Victoria Supercomplex, or the Absolute Naval Defence Line that encompassed the Porta Panama Mass Driver.

The _Potemkin's_ twin-barrelled anti-beam cannon tracked a GINN on a Guul flyer, the gun system hurling green bolts of super-compressed energy particles towards the target. The GINN banked and swerved around the hail of beams, only to get pelted by a stream of 25mm CIWS fire from the _Potemkin's_ stern guns. The Guul started smoking, fuel and coolant leaking from holes in its frame, and the beams finally found their mark as the GINN slowed mid-air, having just ejected from the damaged flight system. The energy blasts cut into the mobile suit, the high heat blasts leaving angry red-rimmed holes in its torso; the mobile suit crashed into the sea in two halves, moments later showering the ship in an explosion that was quickly covered by a massive spray of seawater.

"Lone target destroyed," Ensign Martin Wessen, assistant weapons officer replied.

The chief weapons officer, Lieutenant Anya Graden, continued working the controls, and the _Potemkin_'s display screens lighted up again as the ship's radar started tracking other targets. "Move on to the next target," she ordered.

"Looks like that was a stray wanderer, ma'am," the _Potemkin's_ second-in-command replied. Lieutenant Commander Anatoly Hekovic turned to face his superior. "They seemed to have slowed down their advance; earlier in the day there were so many mobile suits we had trouble tracking them all."

"That's not reassuring at all," Zanaya replied, a hint of annoyance in her voice. "It means that the majority of their main force is already behind the defensive lines." Smoke washed over the front of the cruiser as the _Potemkin _fired off a salvo of surface-to-air missiles, four white trails chasing after an attacking DINN. Martin's fingers danced over the controls as they guided the _Potemkin's _guns to intercept a swarm of missiles from the mobile suit, filling the air with 25mm armour-piercing rounds.

While the _Potemkin_ was unscathed, so was the DINN, its guns blazing as it intercepted the missiles chasing it with ease. Rather than challenging the _Potemkin _to a one-on-one, the pilot wisely manoeuvred the DINN away, joining up with another flight of mobile suits heading in another direction.

For an hour at least, the crew of the _Potemkin_, along with the ships around Alaska, had traded fire with ZAFT's aerial and naval elements. So far, they've managed to destroy a respectable number of mobile suits and more missiles than anyone cared to count; they had also lost numerous vessels to enemy mobile suits, and even now Zanaya silently prayed that previous GOOhN wave that had passed them by towards JOSH-A's shoreline had been the last, hopeless though it might seem.

The opening move of ZAFT's assault against JOSH-A had been a hammer strike against the fleet, and the _Potemkin_ had come close to being sunk twice. First, a ZnO gunning for them had been destroyed when Zanaya had ordered the ship to launch a full spread of conventional torpedoes against the agile ZAFT unit, and had ordered Anya to detonate them when the ZnO came within proximity of the torpedoes' blast zones.

It had been a wasteful and desperate manoeuvre; while the ZnO had been dealt with, the sheer power that came from multiple close-range blasts was almost too much, and the _Potemkin's _hull had some cracks knocked into them. However, the ship had avoided a grisly fate that Zanaya had seen happen to allied warships too many times throughout her service career.

The second time was a DINN squadron attack. A massive bombardment, followed by DINNs attempting close-range assault, had struck down four warships, allowing more ZAFT mobile suits and vehicles to stream through the defence lines. The _Potemkin_ had barely been able to defend itself as the ZAFT forces continued their push; the _Halcyon Days_, another _Arkansas_-class cruiser assigned to the same sector as the _Potemkin_, was swarmed with fire, the rounds and missiles slamming into the bridge of the already mortally-wounded warship.

Zanaya closed her eyes for a moment as she remembered ordering Anya to direct anti-air fire towards the _Halcyon Days_; twin beam lances knocked a DINN out of the sky as it attempted to take to the skies again after venturing close to the bridge of the _Halcyon Days _to deliver a clean decapitation. The beam blasts had struck the DINN, melting off most of the mobile suit, but the _Halcyon Days _was long-gone by then.

The battle had only continued going south as it progressed; ZAFT had landed ground troops northwest and southeast of JOSH-A, and there was nothing the _Potemkin_ could do as an anti-air naval cruiser against ground opponents. Ships they could still deal with somehow, but the reports of the tank battalions being overwhelmed and the ZAFT attackers taking out the land-based defences were nothing more but doomsday heralds to the ship crew. And with the land-based defence lines ragged, ZAFT elements had opted for the easier route, instead leaving a token force to harass the OMNI warships and prevent them from hunting for the _Vosgulov_-class submarines; if those were taken out, ZAFT would either have to take and hold JOSH-A, or submit to the fact that there would be no way of getting them out of enemy territory easily.

On the OMNI side, their command team's relocation to JOSH-A on the urging of the Atlantic Federation's command committee had turned out to be the misjudgement of the century. They had thought themselves safe, but ZAFT had shown that with orbital drops and technology on their side, there was no place on Earth they couldn't reach, if they so wanted to. OMNI could ill-afford to lose its command team here.

Now, with JOSH-A's defensive lines leaking from all sides, Zanaya waited for new orders that were several minutes late. If the naval front was still hotly contested, Zanaya supposed that it was partially because of the _Archangel_ stationed in the northern defence sector; the powerful OMNI warship had almost singlehandedly repelled three ZAFT assaults and was still in the air.

"Comms, is there anything on the Alpha channel?" Zanaya asked. Powerful allies were of little concern to her if they were nowhere near her. _Best to concentrate on the current area._

"Nothing whatsoever, ma'am," Ensign Fredric Stonner replied. "JOSH-A has been silent on all channels since sixteen minutes ago."

"What could be keeping them off the air for so long?" Anatoly clasped his hands together, unable to keep his mind from worrying. "There would have been news from the secondary command centres if the main CIC of JOSH-A had been hit, but even they are as clueless as we are."

"Maybe there was a cut to the communication lines in JOSH-A," Zanaya replied, leaning back into the captain's seat. "But we still have our standing orders, and those are to defend the local waters."

"Yes, but still-" Anatoly began.

A shrill warning siren cut off the rest of his sentence. "Contacts!" the head radar officer replied. Lieutenant Junior Grade Rina Yi quickly uploaded the most recent radar image to the main display screen. The _Potemkin_'s GUNGNIR radar system could track up to forty targets with little trouble, although guiding weapons to hit them would prove to be the troublesome part of the equation, especially when it came to mobile suits. "Three _Vosgulov_-class submarines, accompanied by a squadron of eight GINNs on Guul flyers!"

"Ma'am, they're jamming our radar! Confirmed signal emission from a DINN SEIT!" the officer manning the air radar said. Ensign Sharonne Maxter uploaded the display to the main screen, showing the positions of the enemy; Zanaya narrowed her eyes as they focused on the DINN SEIT's map marker. "Broadcast a free message; request for aerial support against the DINN SEIT."

"Aye ma'am," Fredric replied. A moment later the answer came. "32nd Air Wing, 6th Squadron is approaching our area. ETA 1 minute."

"Trace their signals; provide them with an allied data-link," Rina ordered Sharonne. To Zanaya, she asked, "Counter-jam or tracking enhancement, ma'am?"

Zanaya's reply was near-instantaneous. "Counter-jamming. Wait for the GINNs to enter our weapons range."

The _Potemkin_'s onboard radar systems, manned by one crewman responsible for either aerial targets or naval targets and commanded by a senior officer, could either trace an enemy radar signal back to its origin and use it to amplify the homing capabilities of their anti-air weapons, or hack into the signal to send their own jamming radar signals to the enemy. The air radar officer acknowledged, his fingers quickly inputting commands into the screen.

"Eighteen high-speed acoustic signals detected," Ensign Lake Regnant, naval radar officer said. "Most likely torpedoes. Larger signals are hanging back."

"The _Vosgulovs_ are keeping distance… hack their signals," Rina replied. "Randomize the torpedoes' approach vectors."

"Tracking," Lake said. A moment later the ensign turned to face Tina, his frustration evident in his voice. "I can't get a wireless hack-I think they're using wired or unguided torpedoes!"

"Arm side launchers with cluster torpedoes," Zanaya said in a calm voice. "Anya, work with Tina to estimate the best time for firing."

"Aye ma'am," two sets of voices answered, and Anya connected her workstation to Tina's. A firing arc appeared and highlighted an oval on the tactical map; the area indicating the best firing solution to launch the torpedo interceptors.

The weapons, first tested prior to the Casablanca Sea Battle, were originally created as disposable minelayers, but when ZAFT naval forces began deploying aquatic mobile suits that couldn't be caught by conventional anti-submarine warfare means (the previous ZnO being an example of a lucky case), OMNI repurposed their mine-laying cluster missiles to launch short-range seeking torpedoes. They proved successful enough that it became standard for even ships in anti-air configuration to carry a stock of them on-board for defensive purposes.

"Firing," Anya said. "Tubes one and two on both sides away."

A four-beat tune of explosive sounds rocked around the interior of the _Potemkin_ as its side-mounted anti-surface missile tubes emptied their payload. Four cluster missiles streaked into the air before arcing for the surface of the sea; the four large water sprays that followed indicated that they were now in their element, the missiles leaving little trace of their entrance into the sea.

Tina watched, her workstation synced with that of Lake's, as the cluster missiles separated into twelve components each for a total of forty-eight smaller torpedoes. Zanaya watched on her own display screen as the smaller warheads each made contact with the larger ZAFT torpedoes; it took four or five to fully neutralize one.

"Torpedoes all cleared-wait, I'm reading new signals," Lake replied. "They're too slow to be torpedoes!"

"6th Squadron has engaged the DINN SEIT; they've chased it away from the battle zone. Unable to keep them in allied tracking range." Sharonne said. "New signals; GINN squadron approaching in attack vector! Two of them are heading for us; the others are splitting themselves up to engage the _Kestrel _and the _Anzio_!"

The _Kestrel _and _Anzio_ were both _Des Moines_-class cruisers, examples of anti-surface warfare made live by modifying the hull, weapons and systems of the _Arkansas_-class cruisers. As a result, they lacked the powerful multi-tracking systems of the _Arkansas_-class cruisers, and their anti-air weaponry utilization was laughable when put alongside the _Potemkin_.

Their anti-ship firepower was such that the _Vosgulov_-class submarines, even with numbers on their side, would be hard-pressed to take down the _Kestrel _and _Anzio_ in a single assault. The aerial GINNs were a different story, however, and would make short work of them both, if the _Potemkin _couldn't fulfil its job of anti-air defence for its assigned sector_. _

"Commander, I believe we should advance ahead of the _Kestrel_ and _Anzio_ to make full use of our extended anti-air range," Anatoly said. "If they are sunk, we will have little chance of repelling any naval assaults in this sector."

If Zanaya Helviya was anxious, her face betrayed no emotion as she calmly gave her next orders. "Noted, Anatoly. Fredric, Rina, establish a network link with the _Kestrel _and _Anzio,_ and begin a battlezone sweep for all possible targets. Our orders are to hold position, but I believe that they would prefer to be more mobile in an anti-submarine fight."

"Aye ma'am," both crewmembers replied, Fredric immediately opening a comm line to the captains of both ships.

"Anya, arm front launchers with anti-air, type two," Zanaya said, referring to the _Potemkin's_ stock of airburst missiles. "We're just going to waste missiles if we launch conventional ones without EWACS support."

"Aye ma'am," Anya replied, her fingers deftly selecting options on her workstation, dumping the more mundane tasks of CIWS sweep pattern and overall weapons status to Martin's console.

"Start the ship, quarter speed forward," Zanaya said. "Time to work, Finden."

The _Potemkin's _main navigation officer, Lieutenant Junior Grade Curtz Finden, gripped the cruiser's drive wheel in anticipation. "Aye ma'am, ready to strike!"

The _Potemkin_ rumbled as its engines pumped power into its propulsion systems. Seconds later white wake washed from the sides of the ship as it moved forward, the better to intercept the GINNs before they came too close. The _Kestrel_ and _Anzio _hung back a distance; they had no problems trading long-range fire with the Vosgulov submarines, and if any GINNs slipped past the _Potemkin_, they wanted to have the time to prepare a defence while the _Potemkin_ attempted to compensate.

"Radar is going into high-performance mode," Rina said. "All targets accounted for."

"Set up anti-air defence pattern, type six," Zanaya ordered. "Prepare to fire front launchers. Assign a gunner to the beam gun system."

Anya and Martin worked the weapons controls. "Wessen, CIWS guns on type-six air defence pattern," she said. Her fingers halted as they waited for Zanaya to give the final orders. "Front launchers armed with type-two missiles. Firing solution waiting for confirmation."

The GINNs scattered as their computers registered the _Arkansas_-class's tracking systems. As Zanaya had predicted, the GINNs that were going after the _Kestrel _and _Anzio_ were doing their best to speed past the _Potemkin_. It would have been successful, except that the _Potemkin's_ guns were now sending short, controlled bursts of 25mm fire towards them, slowing them down and forcing them to dodge the fire. "Empty the front launch cells," Zanaya ordered. "Beam gun system running optimization programs, all targets free."

The front of the _Potemkin_ vanished in a massive smoke and propellant cloud as the ship emptied all 32 of its frontal launcher cells, the missiles streaking towards the GINNs. Weapons fire flashed as the GINNs returned fire, and the missiles started to explode one by one.

A good number survived the 76mm barrage of the GINNs, however, and as they reached optimum distance, the warheads exploded. Heavy anti-air shrapnel clouds encompassed the entire sky as the GINNs bore the full brunt of the attack, two going down from massive damages to their frames. One more retreated from the battlefield, its armour dented in too many places to count, and another headed straight for the _Potemkin,_ the engines on its flyers having shut down from taking too much damage. Twin beams lanced out to spear its flyer unit, burning off the GINN's feet, and the mobile suit crashed into the sea, limbs tearing off from the high-speed impact onto the water surface. The other GINNs veered off and gathered up again, preparing for another attack run.

"_Vosgulov_ submarines are in attack vector with escorts," Tina replied. "Identifying acoustic signals now; ID places them as four GOOhNs and two ZnOs."

"Arm and fire side launchers at own time, own target; cluster torpedoes," Zanaya ordered.

Alongside the _Potemkin_, the _Kestrel _and _Anzio_ moved into position, their launchers spitting off torpedoes, their 155mm cannons firing heavy rounds without stopping. Splashes of water covered each ship momentarily as the Potemkin's side launchers fired; seconds later, explosions filled the air as the munitions of both sides met each front head-on.

The first GINN assault wave slipped through the _Potemkin's_ defensive fire, heading straight for the _Anzio._ The lead GINN spiralled into the sea as its Guul flyer took a catastrophic hit from several 25mm rounds, but the second and third GINNs struck the cruiser in its front launchers with several 500mm Cattus shots, the resultant explosion wreathing the warship in thick black smoke, and disabling both its front launcher cells and 155mm gun in a single attack.

In a move that Zanaya was all too used to seeing, the two GINNs positioned their Guul flyers so that it was gliding backwards, and squeezed off a few more shots before flying off; the ten-odd or so 500mm rounds struck the _Anzio _amidships and in its stern where its engines were, the explosions chaining all the way up to its bridge. The glass of the _Anzio's _bridge shattered as fire erupted from its interior, as the ship's CIWS guns fired their last sputter of 25mm rounds at the fleeing GINNs. On the _Kestrel's_ side, things were slightly better as a GINN took a missile hit to its torso, the blow sending it into the sea, leaving its Guul flyer to amble through the air aimlessly before the _Kestrel_'s CIWS guns picked it apart.

"_Anzio_, lost!" Rina replied. "ZAFT naval mobile suits now in attacking range!"

"_Cairo_ from the third sector is approaching as reinforcement," Ensign Lake Regnant said. "Entering our sector of defence in three minutes."

An explosion rocked the waters in front of the two remaining OMNI warships as a _Vosgulov_-class submarine surfaced a few kilometres away from them, all four of its forward launching tubes a mangled mess; the torpedoes from the _Anzio _and _Kestrel_ had found their mark and forced it to take desperate measures to survive. It didn't matter, however, as the _Kestrel_'s 155mm main gun sent a three-round burst into the submarine's exposed internals, and the vessel drifted to one side as the damage proved too much for its superstructure, the smoke from internal fires obscuring much of the sinking wreck.

The next second, a spray of water showered the side of the _Potemkin _as a torpedo found its mark.

"Ops!" Zanaya said, holding on to the sides of her command chair even as the ship listed from side to side due to the impact. "Report!"

"Light damage to lower hull,", the reply came, one Lieutenant Junior Grade Kody Grant managing the reports from various ship sections; around him, two Ensigns were hard at work communicating with the rest of the ship, from ammunition stores to overheating problems in the pipes. "It's already been contained by the action teams; looks like it was a glancing hit."

"The _Kestrel's _been hit!" Rina replied, as Zanaya turned to assess the situation with her own eyes. A ZnO had boosted out of the waters and onto the _Kestrel's_ front deck, where it had quickly swept a clawed arm through the bridge and levelled off the beam gun mounted in its left arm against the mangled remains. The ZnO was about to dive back into the waters amidst the explosions claiming the _Kestrel_ when the beam guns of the _Potemkin _fired, spearing the mobile suit from behind.

The explosion barely fazed Zanaya as she turned to deal with the latest threat; two _Vosgulov_-class submarines bearing down on the _Potemkin_, accompanied by the remaining four GINNs, one ZnO and four GOOhNs. She was about to order Anya to load weapons when a sudden blast of static cut into the bridge.

"-is Lieutenant Commander Murrue Ramius, captain of the _Archangel_; to all OMNI warships, we are leaving the battlezone with immediate effect. We have found irrefutable evidence of JOSH-A's command centre being abandoned by our superiors; our initial mission, which was to lure the ZAFT forces in, has been accomplished. I am therefore exercising due judgment to leave the combat zone as I have judged JOSH-A to be lost. I repeat, this is-"

Zanaya looked to her side as Anatoly angrily slammed his fist on Fredric's console. "Is this true?!" His hands trembled in rage. "Fredric! Hail the _Archangel_! I want to hear this from Ramius' own mouth!"

"Rest it, Anatoly," Zanaya said. "If this is true, then there is little hope for us."

"You seem unperturbed by the situation, ma'am," Anatoly said.

"If I am, then it's because our exact orders were to stay and defend, and not to lure the enemy in." Zanaya's eyes narrowed, but she otherwise displayed no other emotion, even as flashes of CIWS fire arced around the ship. Another GINN dodged and ducked, returning to a safe distance as the _Potemkin's _beam guns swivelled around and to track it. "All OMNI has done it to empty this place; what is to say they might have simply foreseen the outcome of this battle? Unless we have express evidence of a betrayal from the Atlantic Federation, we cannot move from here. Even if there were evidence, the Atlantic Federation… no, OMNI itself could charge us on grounds of dereliction of duty and cowardice in the face of the enemy."

"Commander!" Anatoly said, frustration edging into his voice, as he realized just how small the corner that the _Potemkin _was trapped in was.

"The captain has a point, sir." Anya said. "We cannot move from here."

Anatoly looked at Zanaya, then at Anya. Both were veterans of the naval skirmishes around Europe, and both had bore witness to OMNI's heavy-handed measures, some of them initiated by overzealous or cowardly officers transferred from Atlantic Federation postings. Even as the junior officers working on the bridge continued to keep the GINNs and GOOhNs off the _Potemkin's_ back, Anatoly understood that no matter where they turned, they would be headed for a court-martial unless they could prove that they were set up.

A new transmission cut into the channels, and this one got Zanaya to sit straighter; even ZAFT stopped, the GINNs falling back to a safe range and the _Vosgulov_ submarines stopping their advance through the waters, as all present in Alaska listened to the desperate voice of a young man.

"ZAFT! OMNI! I'm transmitting this to both sides! Any minute now, a Cyclops System under JOSH-A will activate and cause this place to self-destruct! I ask that all sides retreat from battle immediately! I repeat-"

Anatoly cringed in shock. "A… A Cyclops System?!" He clenched his fists. "Atlantic bastards!"

Zanaya, however, remained impassive; if Anatoly's outburst had affected her, she made no outward sign. To Finden, she gave new orders. "Maintain current speed. Prep for sharp evasive manoeuvres."

"Aye ma'am!" the ever-spirited Curtz replied, amidst Anatoly's despairing sigh. "_Potemkin_, ready for close-range naval battle!"

"The ZAFT units aren't budging," Rina replied. "The GINNs are entering an attack vector, and both remaining Vosgulovs are heading into an attack vector!"

Zanaya sat back into her chair. "This was what I meant by evidence. You might want to find a seat, Anatoly." She licked her lips in anticipation. "This might be a rough ride out."

Anatoly took his seat at the second-in-command's workstation. "Ready, commander," he answered. "But I don't see how this can absolve us of some trumped-up charge."

"If an unknown faction can appear and inform us about a supposedly top-secret self-destruct function hidden under what was supposed to be the largest permanent installation of OMNI," Zanaya said. "Then I think it's enough proof that this place is lost. At the very least, we have a case to present to any board of enquiry that might follow after this… if, of course, we get out of here alive."

Leaving Anatoly to think on her words, Zanaya turned back to her display, assessing the situation at a glance. "Anya, have the CIWS guns fire in a sweeping arc in front of us. Arm all frontal missile launchers with type-one anti-air, and the side torpedo tubes with type-four guided warheads. "

One of the GINNs, armed with a sniper rifle, steadied itself as it dodged streams of 25mm and tracers, waiting to strike the bridge of the _Potemkin_ with a well-placed anti-armour round. The others, armed with the standard 76mm rifle, fired at the warship, trying to distract the Naturals from the greater threat. Smoke washed over its legs docked to the Guul flyer as another GINN emptied the rocket tubes of its Guul flyer at the _Potemkin. _Heavy rounds bounced off the hull, leaving dents, as the _Potemkin_ prepared for its last skirmish,

"Rockets, incoming!" the aerial radar officer replied.

"Set CIWS sweep pattern to close-range defensive," Zanaya said, her tone stable and without panic. "Tina, fire a superstatic radar burst at the GINN with the sniper rifle. Anya, arm frontal tubes one-one to one-eight and fire missiles. Set tracking pattern to pincer, type-six. Martin, fire torpedo tubes; aim them at the _Vosgulov_ that poses the most threat to us."

"Aye ma'am," the crew replied, setting the _Potemkin's _GUNGNIR multi-target/mode, long-range shipborne radar on the sniper rifle-equipped GINN. The _Potemkin's _radar systems immediately compiled a massive string of gibberish code and irregular radio wave patterns, aiming them at the ZAFT mobile suit, even as the cruiser's front and side launchers erupted in smoke, sending their payload into the sky and sea.

On the ZAFT side, the pilot cursed as every cockpit screen fuzzed and became awash in statics. Using a warship's total sensor and radar power to combat mobile suits was an effective but highly impractical mode of combat; it allowed the larger and more cumbersome warships to cut through the inherent sensor-disrupting N-jamming phenomena that saturated the Earth after the April Fool's Crisis, but left the ship essentially blind to everything else. In typical mobile suit combat it would be a sign for other mobile suits to fill the warship with holes, but in this case it was the _Potemkin's_ ace card.

The GINN performed every trick in the book as its pilot tried to manoeuvre away from the _Potemkin's_ radar range and to avoid the missiles coming after it, to no avail as all eight warheads slammed into the GINN. Metal rained from the sky as the GINN fell in a flaming wreck.

Meanwhile, the _Vosgulov_ submarine that was targeted had launched its own counter-torpedoes; on the sonar map, the area was a mess of waves thanks to the detonations. It was exactly what Zanaya wanted, however; blind the first submarinelong enough for them to slip past.

The second GINN, apparently deciding on bravado tactics, disengaged from its Guul flyer and landed right in front of the _Potemkin_. One of the _Potemkin_'s CIWS guns fired, the 25mm rounds shearing off its arm and rifle into the sea.

Zanaya hesitated for the slightest moment as the GINN closed towards the bridge to avoid the CIWS turret, and drew its heavy sword. "Anya; arm two-four front with a missile! Fire!"

Below the _Potemkin's_ front deck, a single missile slid into the launch rack of the fourth missile cell of the second row of launchers; the launch doors opened, exposing the GINN's groin to the missile.

The missile didn't even detonate as Anya fired it; it was too close for it to explode the conventional way, but the GINN collapsed all the same as the launched warhead smashed into the GINN's left leg joint, sending it toppling into the ocean. The missile exploded from damage one second later, close enough to shatter the shockproof glass of the _Potemkin_'s bridge.

Zanaya alone remained seated and unmoving as glass fragments showered the interior of the bridge; even Anya ducked to avoid any fragments getting into her eyes, and Anatoly was practically hunched into his seat. Wiping the blood flowing from a light gash on her face, she stared straight ahead as the bridge crew hurried to gather their wits, acutely aware of the second _Vosgulov_-class underneath the waves... and the six torpedoes it just fired. There would be no time to launch countermeasures, not at this short range.

She weighed her choices. "Finden". Increase speed to full, no directional changes."

Curtz complied without hesitation. "Aye ma'am, full speed straight ahead!"

And in a whisper she herself could barely hear, Zanaya added, "And all the way back to the motherland we swore fealty to. To the OMNI we can fight for."

Every instrument on the _Potemkin's _bridge flickered as a massive EM wave, invisible to the naked eye, expanded outwards from JOSH-A. Electronics failed and wireless transmission became nothing as the Cyclops System entered its final ignition phase.

The torpedoes, their guidance systems fried by the EM wave, missed the _Potemkin_ by metres as the cruiser leapt forward through the waves, cutting through the roiling waters. Then the massive tidal waves came, and both the _Potemkin _and its final opponent were swept up in the blinding light and concealing steam generated by the Cyclops System.

Waves dozens of metres tall pulled the _Potemkin_ around in a violent ride through a never-ending fog of steam and seawater; through her clenched teeth, Zanaya allowed herself a short, savage laugh at her desperate victory.

**CE 71 May 8th, Several Dozen Miles North of Alaska, Atlantic Federation**

**Afternoon 16 22**

Lieutenant Colonel Bolvar Kasavok watched as part of an entourage from JOSH-A as the two top OMNI officials, seated in front of him, left the room, two activation keys slotted into briefcase systems. He knew that far away, the Cyclops System under JOSH-A had been activated… and that many of his Eurasian Federation comrades would cease to be on this day.

He could not show the anger he felt, not in front of those two officers. He hated that one of the two officers was the overall commander for the Atlantic Federation, and had so easily bent OMNI to his will. He was even more angry that the other officer, the Eurasian Federation's top commander, had also subverted himself to such an extreme measure to win the war. Bolvar's recent posting into the newly formed 81st Autonomous Mobile Group, something he had considered a point worthy of great merit, meant nothing to him now.

Bolvar made sure to keep his clenched fists out of sight as the two officers left the room. He had no love for keeping the Coordinators around, but if this was how the Atlantic Federation wanted to play, they would regret having him as part of the 81st.

**CE 71 May 27th, Arkansas-class cruiser _Potemkin_, Eurasian Federation Far East Naval Maintenance Floating Complex "Port Zhuravlik", 10 Kilometres East of the Kamchatka Peninsula**

**Evening 19 19**

The damaged _Potemkin_ limped into Port Zhuravlik, escorted by Republic of East Asia warships, on the 20th of May, twelve days after the fateful battle of JOSH-A. As the crew rested, they had continued to keep watch, and they, like the rest of the world, were forced to watch as ZAFT steamrolled the Earth Alliance/OMNI forces at Panama, in revenge for JOSH-A. Even the shocking introduction of OMNI mobile suits had failed to stem the tide, and now OMNI was without a mass driver system of its own.

Within the hour, Zanaya and her crew had been called back into action; they were still on standby and awaiting their orders, but with any action at Kaohsiung deemed high-risk, low gain (in terms of any guarantee at retaking the mass driver there), Zanaya guessed that they still had their peace, for now. She had briefly considered the possibility of being deployed to take Carpentaria, but from what she had heard, an operation like that was already in the planning, and the required forces drawn up.

Many of the crew had been vocal, especially Anatoly, at having to serve the whims of OMNI again. The Cyclops System explosion had been their saving grace; it had scrambled the electronics of every warship in a 15km radius and completely sunk any pursuit plans by the enemy; such was the force of the explosion that seeing the carcasses of Vosgulov submarines and OMNI warships on the shores of the resultant crater in Alaska was the norm.

The _Potemkin_, having battled at the far edge of the 10km annihilation radius of the Cyclops System's microwave emitters, had escaped any fatal damage except for its propulsion systems and navigation. They had managed to return as heroes by staying to the last second; from what Zanaya observed, the majority of the Eurasian Federation's command team were either left behind in JOSH-A or as part of the secondary CIC centres in JOSH-A when it detonated.

Very few people had remained who had realized that the Atlantic Federation had used a large part of the Eurasian Federation's navy, marine corps and air force as a sacrificial coupon against ZAFT.

Zanaya had enough time to think it through to convince her team that while she was of similar thought, it was better for them to stay with OMNI for the time being. And she felt that she had been correct; with the Eurasian Federation weakened by the backstabbing, it could ill afford not to accept the technology the Atlantic Federation provided, least amongst them the basic blueprints for the Strike Dagger, the world's first mass-produced Natural-use mobile suit.

Overlooking the reddening skyline from the repaired bridge of the _Potemkin_, Zanaya, however, found that the curing pill of having to band with the Atlantic Federation was well beyond bitter to swallow. She wondered if she would snap anytime soon, and end up damning her crew to live up to the _Potemkin's _namesake.

_Afterword: _

_With the recent release of Battleship 2012, I thought there should be a naval battle to celebrate a navy-related movie since there hasn't been one since forever. What better way to include the navy in the story but to explore the Battle of JOSH-A from a different viewpoint?_


	14. Chapter 14: The Last Sunrise

_Author's Note:_

_This fanfic is to write upon some of the events in Gundam SEED and SEED Destiny that are not touched upon or mentioned in-series, but their dates are listed on GundamWikia and are thus treated as part of canon. They are therefore based upon actual happenings in the Cosmic Era universe, but the events within them are open to interpretation. This fanfic is also an attempt at showcasing a "what-if" of all sides involved in the wars, and how some of the events within the show might have come to be._

**Gundam SEED: Tales of the Cosmic Era**

**Chapter 14: The Last Sunrise**

**CE 71 June 15th, 2nd Armoured Division HQ, O.R.B. Headquarters Building, Orb Union Mainland**

**Noon 12 10**

Lieutenant Commander Kenroukuen Mei, commander of the Orb military's Orb Recon Brigade, Second Armoured Division, watched as the events unfolded on the television screen. Her mouth was pressed into a thin line, the mild discomfort of her dry throat forgotten, as Orb Union Chief Representative Uzumi Nara Atha spoke the words that would decide the fate of the Orb Union.

Kyoukou Hanamori, her subordinate, shifted uncomfortably beside her. "Ma'am…" the Lieutenant Junior Grade began.

Mei held up a hand to indicate that she should keep quiet. As Representative Atha finished his speech, Mei's hand fell to her side, gripping the hilt of the _katana_ that she wore everywhere with her; a miniature shrine maiden doll hung from a keychain hook on its hilt. It was a reminder of her younger days and her most memorable friendship; at a moment like this, holding on to its solid grip helped to keep her mind calm. As Uzumi stepped down from the stage, the entire office, housing nearly forty officers and non-commissioned ranks of the Orb military, was silent. The Orb military had been preparing for possible conflict, but the Chief Representative's words had sealed the deal. And after seeing what had happened at JOSH-A, no one in the Orb military doubted that the Atlantic Federation and OMNI would stop at anything to defeat and bring low the PLANTs.

At length, another man spoke. Commander Cayne Hastler's first words were what everyone wanted to say, but didn't dare to.

"Damn."

And the phones of the office exploded into action as the Orb military began to prepare for their longest and bloodiest battle in the history of the Cosmic Era.

**CE 71 June 15th, 2nd Armoured Division Base, Underground Hangar Complex R-9, Orb Union Onogoro Island**

**Noon 12 15**

Within the next five minutes, Orb went from being on a tightrope to tumbling head-over-heels into the abyss.

Two days ago, the Earth Alliance had parked a massive naval fleet right outside Orb's territorial waters, and demanded that according to the new laws drawn out by the OMNI Security Council, the neutral nations of the Kingdom of Scandinavia, the Equatorial Union, and the Orb Union were to join OMNI as allies in eradicating ZAFT from their Earth-held territories. Their negotiation team had been led by a politician-businessman named Murata Azrael, but it hadn't been so much of a negotiation as blatant stating of cold hard terms.

If any of the three nations refused to join OMNI (and Azrael, over the broadcast, had made it quite clear and in the most condescending tone possible that the only option was to sign up and offer their nation's _everything_ for the sake of defeating the Coordinators), he would call an attack upon them in the name of self-defence. After all, Murata had explained, a neutral nation meant that it could harbour elements of the enemy, and it was important to kill all enemies, for the sake of protecting the Naturals. He had also added that Orb was, to word it kindly, not considerate of its Earth-bound neighbours by declaring themselves neutral, when every nation should be part of the struggle against the Coordinators.

By the end of the broadcast, Mei firmly believed that she would never meet anyone more of an asshole than that Azrael person was.

Mei was willing to bet every cent she had ever earned in her life that the only reason Orb had such special attention was because of its Kaguya Mass Driver. Without a mass driver of its own, OMNI was getting desperate; its bases in space needed supplies from Earth to continue to keep ZAFT on its toes, and without a driver, OMNI would lose its space superiority, allowing ZAFT to perform orbital strikes and drops without fear of retaliation. It would be the nightmare of the century; to face an enemy with global strike capability in every sense of the word.

And so, OMNI had come knocking on Orb's door. The Equatorial Union's agreement had been barely acknowledged; the international organization was the smallest of its kind, and had only manpower and a slight boost in industrial capability to offer to the OMNI war machine. The Kingdom of Scandinavia was in similar situations; it was the only truly neutral nation in the world and over the years had become a major business centre on the surface of the planet. OMNI would not do much to the nation that held their banking reserves whether they joined or not.

That left Orb, which had rejected OMNI's demands on the grounds of it infringing on territorial rights. Mei couldn't argue with Uzumi's views, but she wished he had at least tried to stall the OMNI and give the military a bit more time to prepare before making the speech. Now, OMNI had jumped head-first into a first-strike attack, and that left the defenders of Orb scrambling for a solid foothold against the invaders.

As much as she respected the man, she found his military tact lacking. Severely.

The technician looked as Mei strode past him, her pilot suit's boots barely making a sound against the smooth concrete flooring of the underground hangar. Mei's job could be considered the flip side, the black ops of the Orb military; while they defended, the Orb Recon Brigade's (O.R.B. or ORB) role was to strike first, ask questions later.

First drawn up after the Bloody Valentine Incident, and formally established just prior to the destruction of Heliopolis, some in Orb's ruling cabinet had realized that simply waiting with the strongest shield in hand sometimes wasn't enough. Uzumi didn't know of their existence, like how he didn't know Heliopolis had been a harbour for the development of OMNI's G-Project. That alone was enough damning evidence that Orb was less morally right than it wanted to be.

Right now, however, survival came first over saving face.

In front of her was the MBF-01S Astray Commando Type, the mobile suit used exclusively by the Orb Recon Brigade, the military arm of the Orb Union's Office of External Affairs, built using whatever data they could salvage from the MBF Project at Heliopolis. While ORB had accounted for the Astray Red and Blue Frame prototypes, and the Gold Frame was within possession of Orb, if in the hands of one who could be described as a radical, the Green Frame, as well as the uncompleted and unnamed fifth Frame were lost in the rubble of the destroyed space colony. In time, future generations might sift them out, but now Orb had to make do with mobile suits built with theoretical data.

The Astray Commando Type was by no means a paper tiger, however. Mei had been one of the first test pilots after the first of the Commando Types were put together in February; the various ORB pilots had put the machine through vigorous testing, first against the basic terrain tests, then against the other Commando Types that had been built off the production line. It was a solid machine with good, all-round capabilities, using high-quality parts to improve operation performance in close-combat and high-speed ground battles. This made it costly to manufacture in numbers, but the pilots of ORB weren't a large group.

Aesthetics-wise, the Commando Type resembled the Red Frame, except that its coloured parts were a very deep shade of grey, and its usual white armour plating overlaid with shapes of various shades of grey designed to evoke dazzle camouflage. Its left shoulder was equipped with a swivel mount for a shield, freeing up its left arm for other purposes. A modified Type-71 beam rifle made up its primary ranged armament; the Type-71-55 had a longer barrel, an attached bayonet underneath the barrel, and a hardened rifle stock for extra close-quarters options.

The Astray's communication and weather sensor V-fin was changed and integrated into the Commando Type's head structure, giving it the appearance of a single straight horn rising out from the tip of its head, flanked by two thin horizontal fins at the back of its head, filling out the head's top view silhouette into a mostly-triangular shape. Its additional sensors were moved to the right side of the head, housed in an enclosed section that packed electronics equipment that could match the sensors of the _Aegis_ cruisers of the Orb Navy in distance, if not spectrum.

A 75mm CIWS was mounted on the left side of its head; it was one gun less, but the Commando Type was not a frontline fighter, and the jamming package included in its electronics equipment, a derivative of Orb's supercomputer projects, was powerful enough make up for the loss in interception ability.

Taking a note from the Gold Frame Amatu's arm claws, the Commando Type's arms had flip-out protectors that ended in blunt knobs. Usually a last-resort weapon, the impromptu knuckle-dusters were given short-range beam emitters to improve their offensive power. A beam boomerang was mounted on a right backpack mount, allowing for a thrown weapon in a pinch. A pair of combat knives and beam sabres, housed in the knee armour blocks of the Commando Type, rounded out the armaments of the high-performance mobile suit, allowing quick-draw strikes by skilled pilots.

The Commando Type could use any armament that the other Astray variants could; Cayne's machine, located a few berths away from Mei's, was armed with a Type-71-44 beam sniper rifle. Mei's own Commando Type was armed with a K-1B "_Sentou Ken"_ (_Combat Sword_) katana, in a similar fashion as the Red Frame's "Gerbera Straight"; the blade was made to cut without using beam energy, and Mei had practiced with it in live exercises and tests so many times that she preferred it over beam sabres.

As Mei started up the mobile suit, the reports of the battle began to filter in. Despite their despicable actions, the OMNI forces were ruthlessly efficient, and the Orb military had barely held the defence lines against the first wave of attackers. Even with the OMNI defectee ship _Archangel_ and its unique Freedom Gundam, Orb was hard-pressed to keep enemies from engaging them in direct combat on the shores of Onogoro Island, where the heart of their military facilities and the Kaguya Mass Driver control centre were located.

The massive hatches in the Second Division base opened as the underground hangars deployed their mobile suits. Mei and Kyoukou were the first team; Cayne and his squad the second, and the rest of ORB's mobile suits deployed, their dark-coloured machines gleaming in the afternoon sun.

ORB, being a "brigade", provided all of its combat troops by its own, from special infantry forces to the mobile suits. There were no more than six teams of Commando Types, all of them added together numbering no more than twenty-three mobile suits. And they would have to be the first into the battlefield on the opposite side of the island.

The powerful hip-mounted thrusters of Mei's Commando Type fired up. The thrusters were derived from technology in the Aile Strike's boost thrusters, allowing for quick and powerful jumping manoeuvres.

Clouds of steam covered the grounds of the Second Division's base as the Astray Commando Types shot into the sky with launch rails, clearing ground level in seconds. The view changed from a picturesque scene of the volcano in the northwest side of Onogoro Island to a bird's eye view of Orb's sovereign lands, and Mei saw the true scope of the battle; the sky was alight in fire and smoke trails as Orb's Fourth and Sixth Armoured Division battled against OMNI landing elements seeking a foothold on Orb's Onogoro Island.

The various Commando Types spread through the air as new orders came in from the leader of ORB's MS contingent, Captain Amaki Reishou. "Kananoh, take your team and assist the battalion at the military port. Kenroukuen, Hastler, you're in charge of repelling assaults that have penetrated the defence line at the Onogoro Military Port. Kousaka, Sarkovich, you're with me; we're going to counter the enemy advance trying to invade from the volcano's side."

"Acknowledged," Mei said, adjusting the jump trajectory of her Commando Type. The mobile suit twisted in midair and fired its thrusters, and behind her, Kyoukou's unit did the same. Cayne's team hit the ground first before adjusting their direction and jumping off, and the six mobile suits arced for the fighting going on at the main military port.

"Kenroukuen, we'll each take different sectors," Cayne said. "Since your team only has two members, you should take the forest areas. That'll help in planning out attacks against stragglers."

"Acknowledged, Hastler," Mei replied, as Cayne's team shifted position again, this time closer to the military port.

No sooner had she gotten her trajectory changed when beams lanced out to greet them; dirt sprayed from the ground as Mei's mobile suit landed quickly. The shoulder shield of the Commando Type slid into place just as a 300mm round slammed into the protective armament, the Commando Type managing to stay upright despite the impact thanks to its crouched position.

The Strike Dagger wielding the Hyper Bazooka crumpled as Mei returned fire with three rapid shots with the Commando Type's Type-71-55 beam rifle, the powerful beams boring clean through the mobile suit. The Strike Dagger beside the first staggered as a single shot pierced its left leg; a second round struck it through the torso, the resultant engine explosion engulfing the unit a second later. Kyoukou's unit landed next, immediately taking up position as three more Strike Daggers crested the hill the bordered the area, led by a 105 Dagger with a Launcher Strike pack.

It was hard telling which side opened fire first; the OMNI team or Mei and Kyoukou. Either way, a Strike Dagger jerked as a rain of beams punctured its frames; the second Strike Dagger staggered as a beam shot burned through its right shoulder armour block, and the 105 Dagger opened fire with its shoulder vulcan.

Mei's Astray Commando Type shook from the impact of 120mm rounds striking the shield it had hidden behind, a second later boosting away without its rifle as the 105 Dagger fired its Agni cannon; the powerful plasma weapon had melted the rifle's exposed barrel just by grazing it, rendering it worthless.

"Commander!" Kyoukou shouted, her Astray bringing up its beam rifle and squeezing off five shots in quick succession. To her disbelief, the 105 Dagger deftly manoeuvred backwards, thrusters flaring; two beam shots splashed harmlessly against the shield it carried in its left arm. The rest missed their mark, the shots fusing the ground into patches of superheated glass where they had hit.

"Keep alert!" Mei said, as a railgun round slashed through the air to strike where Kyoukou's Astray had been standing seconds ago. A Fortrestra Duel Dagger crashed through the surrounding forest and immediately drew its beam sabre, making straight for Kyoukou.

With a straight kick, the Astray sent the Fortrestra Duel Dagger stumbling back, but it steadied itself; its left shoulder block popped open, launching a wave of five rockets at both Mei and Kyoukou, even as the two Strike Daggers attempted to flank the Astrays.

"This is ridiculous," Kyoukou remarked. "It's like the third defence line is nonexistent!"

"There're probably too many holes in the lines for the Fourth Division to cover everything," Mei said, as she activated the CIWS of her unit. 75mm rounds sliced through the air as the rockets detonated mid flight, covering the area in black smoke and debris; taking the chance, Mei jettisoned her Astray's shoulder shield, and drew its _Sentou Ken_ in a single deft movement.

The closest Strike Dagger went down as Mei's Commando Type burst through the rapidly-dissipating smoke cloud, striking down the OMNI mobile suit with one strike as the Astray drove the ultra-sharp blade straight through the Strike Dagger's cockpit.

With one mighty push, the Commando Type sent the mechanical carcass straight at the 105 Launcher Dagger; only a last-minute backwards jump had saved the 105 Dagger as Mei's Astray Commando Type stepped forward with blinding speed, and with a straight cut bisected the still-falling Strike Dagger; its forearms and torso crashed to the ground as its legs lingered for a moment, before Mei's Astray Commando Type boosted through the pile of wreckage, pushing it to the side.

The shoulder gun of the 105 Dagger roared only to strike nothing as the Astray Commando Type ducked, a combination of powerful thrusters and nigh-insane footwork allowing Mei to slip her mobile suit through the OMNI unit's firing arc. Mei, her teeth clenched, felt herself getting pushed into the seat padding of her mobile suit as the Astray Commando Type boosted in an arc around the 105 Dagger, the legs of the mobile suit working to keep it stable, and the 120mm rounds tracing a circular path of fire as the Launcher Dagger turned to meet the incoming threat.

The Fortrestra Duel Dagger stomped into the battle, intent on catching Kyoukou from the side even as the remaining two Strike Daggers attempted to flank her; instead, Kyoukou boosted forward, lashing out with the butt of the beam rifle; the impact knocked the lead Strike Dagger backwards even as the Fortrestra Duel Dagger stepped in to fill the opening left behind, a beam sabre flashing to live in its right hand; its left reached out to grab the beam rifle. The moaning sound of metal being crushed echoed as the Fortrestra Duel Dagger's grip bent the beam rifle's barrel out of position.

Kyoukou gritted her teeth as the Astray lashed out with a side kick to the Fortrestra Duel Dagger's foot, throwing it off-balance and sending it crashing to the ground. The OMNI mobile suit was ready, however; it had let go of the beam rifle as it fell, and propping itself with its right hand, pushed away in time to avoid the Astray Command Type as it slammed its activated knuckleduster into the ground. Steam and dust filled the air as the beam spikes of the knuckleduster burned at the soil.

The Astray Commando Type spun around to meet the Strike Dagger attacking from the back, slamming its knuckleduster into the Strike Dagger's torso; the mobile suit staggered as the beam spikes cut deep into the crumpled armour of its torso, leaving ugly gashes in its side as the now-inert Strike Dagger slid off the beam spikes, and onto the muddy and scorched ground. The second Strike Dagger, attempting to jump the Astray Commando Type from where the Fortrestra Duel Dagger had been moments ago, found a beam sabre impaled into its cockpit, Kyoukou having activated the weapons in a back-strike.

The Fortrestra Duel Dagger steadied itself and fired its shoulder railgun, the high-speed round deflecting off the shoulder shield of Kyouyou's Commando Type and into the sky in the blink of an eye. Shield slammed against shield as the Astray Commando Type and the Fortrestra Duel Dagger rammed into each other, the heavier weight of the Duel Dagger giving it the distinct advantage as it sent the Astray Commando Type flying backwards with a backhanded strike.

On Mei's side, the 105 Dagger ducked as the _Sentou Ken_ came within centimetres of decapitating it, and staggered backwards as Mei followed up from her side swing to the 105 Dagger's right side with a diagonal slash within the space of a second. Armor pieces flew off as the blade cut into the top fin of the 105 Launcher Dagger's left shoulder; the 105 Dagger countered with a shield strike that struck at nothing as Mei's Astray Commando Type rapidly shifted stance to its right to avoid the hit, and quickly repositioned her mobile suit so that it thrust its blade into the space in-between the 105 Dagger's shield and its arm. Sparks flew as a swift cut separated shield from arm, the impact causing several components in the 105 Dagger's left arm to short-circuit, and arcs of electricity danced across its elbow joint.

The 105 Dagger staggered backwards, 120mm cannon blazing, and flew backwards in a boost jump as Mei put distance in-between her opponent and herself to avoid the rounds. The Fortrestra Duel Dagger joined the 105 Dagger shortly after, beam rifle spraying shots at the two Astray Commando Types. Kyoukou's unit turtled behind her shield, while Mei moved her Astray back in a series of quick-steps as the ground around them exploded in glass splinters and rock fragments.

Kyoukou's Astray straightened itself as the two OMNI mobile suits disappeared into the forest, towards the direction of the fleet, and Mei's Astray stepped forward, sheathing its sword.

"They… retreated," Kyoukou said, trying to mask her disbelief in her voice. "Odd."

"Not so odd if you think about that," Mei said, updating the allied positioning system on her mobile suit's tactical map. "X"es indicated fallen units, blue arrows still-surviving units, and blue arrows outlined in white indicated those of the Orb Recon Brigade's mobile suit squadrons. "They've lost more men and machines than we have, and they aren't making any progress."

The numbers of crosses on the map were depressing, to say the least, but Mei took comfort from the fact that there were no Recon Brigade MS losses yet. The _Archangel_, the Freedom, and the Orb fleet were also doing a good job holding out; at least, considering that they were fighting with odds of four-to-one or more.

A sharp warning brought Mei to alert. "Enemies!"

Out of the forest, a 105 Dagger boosted forward, beam sabre drawn. On its back was mounted an Aile Striker pack, and as Mei's Astray Commando Type drew its _Sentou Ken_ to intercept the mobile suit, it turned with surprising speed to the left of the Astray and boosted off, leaving the unit bringing up the rear, a Sword 105 Dagger, to slam into the Astray Commando Type, throwing the mobile suit to the side.

A group of six Strike Daggers appeared from another vector, and ignoring the four in-combat mobile suits, made straight for the centre of Onogoro Island, where the main headquarters of Morgenroete Inc. were housed underground.

Mei grunted as the Astray fell backwards, the Sword 105 Dagger pushing against the Orb mobile suit. Letting her unit fall, Mei tucked her mobile suit's left leg inwards, and as the Astray hit the ground, back first, the Astray struck out with its left leg, sending the Sword 105 Dagger flying.

"What the hell is this?!" Kyoukou said, as her Astray Commando Type let loose with a barrage of beam rifle shots. "Stragglers?!"

To the credit of the OMNI pilot, the Sword 105 Dagger threw its beam boomerang at the Astray Commando Type as it flew through the air, and Mei barely avoided the killing arc of the beam weapon as it skirted the ground by rolling her Astray to the right; with a powerful push and the thrusters of the Astray Commando Type, the mobile suit skirted across the ground before another push and a back-flip righted the unit. "Maybe!" she replied. "Or a covert-ops team! It doesn't matter!"

Mei barely had time to react as the thrust of a "Schwert Gewehr" anti-ship sword split the air a second later, the edge of its supercarbon sword tip tearing off pieces of the right armour block of the Astray Commando Type's shoulder from a glancing hit, even as Mei dodged left to avoid the blow, the mobile suit pivoting on one leg.

"Commander!" Kyoukou said, as the Aile 105 Dagger forced her unit back with a dual-blow of beam rifle shots followed up by a flying kick to the Astray Commando Type's shield.

"Focus on your own fight!" Mei said. With a swift move, her Astray Commando Type swung the _Sentou Ken_, a horizontal left-to-right upward stroke using the inertia from the previous dodge, and the ultra-sharp blade neatly separated the Sword 105 Dagger's right forearm from the rest of the mobile suit. The Sword 105 Dagger staggered backwards, but the pilot was calm enough to boost backwards even as Mei's Astray grabbed its own beam boomerang and threw it in a tight, forward strike.

The beam boomerang was deflected by the Aile 105 Dagger as it jumped into the weapon's flight path and lashed outwards with its beam sabre; a bright flash decorated the space in-between the mobile suits as both beam weapon's clashed, and before both Astray Commando Types could do anything, both 105 Daggers had retreated, leaving the beam boomerang to impale into the ground harmlessly.

"Another retreat?" Kyoukou asked, but Mei had already aligned her Astray Commando Type and was preparing for a boosted jump. "Hanamori! The Strike Dagger team that passed us just now!"

Kyoukou bit back a curse as she remembered the six Strike Daggers that had taken the chance to get past them as they were fighting with the 105 Daggers. "On it, ma'am!"

Both Astray Commando Types rocketed into the sky and towards the centre of Onogoro, where the headquarters of Morgenroete Inc., Orb's primary military contractor, were at. If they were to lose that building before the main staff of Morgenroete could evacuate, Orb's future weapons development capabilities would be severely stunted.

Even as they landed, Mei felt the tension slowly leave her body. Standing in front of Morgenrote HQ was the personal Astray Commando Type of ORB's officer-in-command, Amaki Reishou, and arranged around his unit were the metal corpses of six Strike Daggers.

"Captain!" Mei said, as her unit and Kyoukou's landed. "But what about the volcano?"

"Kousaka can handle the defence there, so I left most of my fighting force with her." Amaki said, as his Astray Commando Type deactivated its beam sabre. "More importantly, OMNI forces are currently pulling back across Onogoro Island. I'm afraid that they might be planning for an attack on the mainland first to make us hand over the Kaguya Mass Driver without making them pay for it, so I want to effect a reorganization of our forces. Join up with Hastler, head to Rally Point Foxtrot and gather with the rest of ORB's mobile suit contingent there."

"Yes sir," Kaguya replied.

**CE 71 June 16th, Onogoro Military Port, Onogoro Island, Orb Union**

**Morning 06 21**

Mei poked at the hard pastry with a plastic fork. Her viewpoint was that rations were eaten to fill the body, while food was to be enjoyed; during an operation, she ate only to prevent herself from fainting.

The battle for the military port had been both a poor display of defence and a valiant, successful effort from Orb. Poor, because they had to face the fact that the complete obliteration of the 4th, 5th and 9th Division as combat-capable units left Orb with only 60% of its forces left operable. Valiant and successful, because despite the numbers of mobile suits deployed, the Orb Navy still retained a good 80% of their ships, and considering that they were outnumbered 5:1 in all aspects, even with the Freedom and the _Archangel_ helping them, their losses were considered good enough, considering that they were facing an enraged and desperate OMNI task force.

The hard truth was that "good enough" would not have been enough, however, if the sudden appearance of the Gundam-class _Justice_ mobile suit hadn't tied down the three OMNI Gundams that had proven to be near-unbeatable when matched against Orb's military. Their sudden retreat had proven to be an unexpected surprise; without the three heavily-iconic mobile suits leading the charge, the rest of OMNI had retreated soon after.

A black bird, a green monster of destruction and a scythe-wielding madman. Mei shook her head at the rank-and-file pilots' description of the enemies' Gundams. She knew that any of the pilots of ORB could probably give the new mobile suits a run for their money, but not only did OMNI deploy significant numbers of conventional forces, they had also inserted many special-forces units as flanking combatants into the mix as well. It was good that the pilots of ORB had caught all of them in this opening battle, but defeating them would not be any easier, and tied down as they were, their defence line was stretched beyond thin; Orb simply lacked the numbers to put up any sort of lasting defence.

Even now, the tedious task of cleaning up was still in full swing, having started last evening, and continuing through the night. The military port was in shambles; bodies lay around by the hundreds, if not thousands, and the area was so thick with fumes from open fires, Mei couldn't even smell the odour of charred flesh when she walked by a burnt corpse earlier. Blood was everywhere; splattered, pooled, still flowing, it didn't matter.

Mei still remembered walking the same route she had taken to Rally Point Foxtrot, back when she had first graduated from the Orb military as an officer. She had walked the exact same route, as a guide for the new batch of officer cadets' initialization tour, and the same hangar that she had led them into to showcase a newly-manufactured M1 Astray undergoing calibration and armouring was now a smoking heap of rubble. With a sigh, she idly wondered how many officers from that batch of cadets had survived the battle.

Mei set her ration down and surveyed the field. Despite their long hours, the workers were still doing their best to clear the rubble. She marvelled at this spirit; how they were willing to do their little bit for the nation. Granted, it was unfair to judge with just her viewpoint alone, but OMNI didn't have many awe-inspiring stories lately, after the stunt the Atlantic Federation had pulled at JOSH-A. She had even heard from Captain Reishou that the Eurasian Federation was all but about the cut ties after JOSH-A, but something had held them back; recalling Amaki's exact words, he had called it "a great influence".

Setting aside the politics for now, Mei let her mind drift to more immediate concerns; it was still a top-secret order, but already word was filtering down from the upper ranks about Uzumi's latest stance on the battle.

Orb was preparing to surrender.

Mei's grip on the _katana_ she carried around with her tightened, the shrine maiden keychain shaking. This nation that she had moved to when she was just fourteen years of age, where she had made a name for herself as a respected practitioner of sword arts even within the military, where she had made a promise to her childhood friend to bring her to this peaceful nation where genes did not dictate a person's standing in society…

… was to surrender to the Atlantic Federation-led OMNI, the epitome of blind hatred and irrational jealousy. The thought filled her with anger to the point where she wanted to draw the sword that she had promised would be kept sheathed at all times; a tree or a live person didn't matter, she just _wanted_ to strike something down, to express the anger she had felt at that announcement.

"Commander?" Kyoukou asked, approaching from behind. "Are you alright?"

"I am," Mei replied, trying to get her anger under control. "Did you hear anything on your side?"

"Not anything since Captain Reishou gave us orders to defend the east side of the island," Kyoukou said. "I have to wonder what he thought by sending Commander Kousaka's and Commander Sakovich's teams to the mainland, and Commander Kananoh's team to the Kaguya Mass Driver."

"The Captain's orders were directly given by the Ministry of External Affairs," Mei said. "Whatever the government's planning, we just have to trust in them."

"… Can we win, though?" Kyoukou said, anger threatening to break her voice. She looked out to where the OMNI fleet had gathered. "Against such numbers and blind hatred…"

"We have to," Mei said. "Orb has no future if we fail here."

Kyoukou closed her eyes and nodded. "Yes, ma'am. I will fight with every bit of strength I have… to defend this nation!"

Mei gave a friendly pat on her subordinate's shoulder as Cayne Hastler approached the both of them. "Still holding up, Miss Flowers?"

Kyoukou shot him an annoyed glare. "That smile of yours is irritating, _Commander,_" she said, making sure to pump as much sarcasm as she could into the rank honorific. "And yes, I am still doing well, sir."

"Spunky as a blossoming spring flower," Cayne said, a cheeky grin tugging at the edges of his mouth. "And you, Miss Royal?"

Mei returned his friendly probe with a cool smile. "Itching to get back in action, Cayne." She turned to return to her Astray Commando Type, the early morning sun glinting off its steel frame. It had been hastily repaired, the new shoulder block of her unit a stark contrast to the scorched and dusty exterior of the rest of her machine.

Cayne fell into step alongside her. "How are the twin pretties reacting to taking a backseat?"

Both Commander Hawaki Kananoh and Lieutenant Commander Houka Kananoh, twins in both name, nature and face, served in the Second Squadron of the Orb Recon Brigade; Hawaki as the commander, and Houka as her second-in-command. "If you're talking about Hawaki and Houka," Mei replied, "They're not too pleased at having to take a defensive stance. OMNI's not likely to come near to the Kaguya Driver due to their intention of capturing it intact."

"As we could all see," Cayne replied, and his voice dropped in volume and tone. "I think Captain Reishou's activating Plan 226."

Mei's voice was toneless, but Cayne knew where to look to see his comrade's distress; true to his view, her fists shook a little as they tightened their grip. "What makes you think that?"

"Surrender would never be an acceptable option," Cayne said. "Dissolution of the government and the national identity as a whole… it's unacceptable for us all." He stopped as Mei grabbed the tow winch elevator hanging down from her Astray Commando Type's cockpit. "The fragmentation of ORB into the world is our only option left."

"We could do much more together and with the main body of the Orb military," Mei said, but Cayne cut her off.

"Exactly why we have to be scattered to the winds," he replied. "We are the eyes and ears of Orb, Kenroukuen. As the hopes of the nation flee to space, we have to ensure that when they return to Earth, they're not blind to the new world on all fronts."

Mei swallowed. She never imagined that Reishou would actually initiate the course of action. "Are you here to hand me my orders, then?"

Cayne gave her a nondescript white envelope. "Read it carefully, then dispose of it. Don't keep it with you after this."

"I got it," Mei replied. Cayne simply nodded and walked off, back to where his team was ready for him to board his machine and take up position.

Mei watched until he turned a corner, and was about to open the letter when a long, drawn-out alarm sounded. Kyoukou was already boarding her machine; with an explosive sigh, Mei set herself into the cockpit of the Astray Commando Type, and powered up her machine.

"This is Sword Leader on ORB line," she said. The previous day had been a hasty deployment; they had just been assigned their codewords last night. "Sword Team in position and ready."

"Axe Leader on ORB line," Cayne's voice filtered through. "Axe Team ready."

One by one, the squadron leaders of ORB checked in. "Slash Leader here," Amaki Reishou's voice filtered through the sketchy comms. "I have no further orders for you. Fight as best as you can, and when the time comes, act as you see fit."

Amaki continued his words as the OMNI attackers came into sighting distance on the screen; bright flashes appeared, the telltale sign of weapons and missile fire. "I know not how long our fights will take. It will certainly not end today. It might not end within the next few months, or even the next few years. But however long it takes, I hope to see you all back here again when Orb rises from the ashes, alive and ready to continue towards the future."

"Yes sir," Mei replied. "In the name of the Orb Union!"

"I'll be waiting for that day, sir," Cayne Hastler, Third Squadron commander said.

"Our skills will prevail us. Until the day," Andi Sakovich, Fifth Squadron commander replied.

"For nation and future," Hawaki Kananoh, Second Squadron commander said.

"We won't let them run wild any longer," Kousaka Kae, Fourth Squadron commander replied.

"Go forth with valour," Amaki said. "Slash Leader out."

No sooner had the comms link cut when the first missiles hit the ground. Even as the Freedom, Justice and the _Archangel_ moved out to intercept the enemy, OMNI's hammer blow came crashing down everywhere, and within the next few minutes Mei found herself facing an Aile 105 Dagger; specifically, the one that had defeated her strike with a decoy move yesterday. She recognized its emblem; a circle, with three arrows overlapping it and pointing towards the centre of the circle.

It was even faster now that Mei was facing it in direct combat; abandoning all illusions about shooting it down, the Astray Commando Type dropped its shield and drew its _Sentou Ken_ in one swift move; the light of the morning and tracer streaks in the distance reflecting off the burnished blade; the Astray Commando Type brought it forward against the beam sabre of the Aile 105 Dagger in a blinding display of plasma arcs.

The 105 Dagger didn't stay still for long; it fired its boosters and twisted sideways, and drew a second beam sabre as it slashed away at the Astray Commando Type. Leaping backwards, the Astray Commando Type backtracked away from the flashing whirlwind of yellow flashes; with a quick throw, the Astray Commando Type flung its beam boomerang at the Aile 105 Dagger.

To her consternation, the Aile 105 Dagger not only did not bother to deflect the blow and give an opening for her to strike, it simply executed an aileron roll, letting the beam boomerang that was aimed at its head now fly harmlessly through the gap in-between its legs. A backward swing by the 105 Dagger slapped the beam boomerang out of its flight path and sent it crashing to the ground, out of Mei's reach. As its beam blade died down, the foot of a mobile suit slammed down on it, and a Sword 105 Dagger stepped into view.

"Those are… yesterday's enemies!" Kyoukou said, her Astray Commando Type stepping away from the corpse of the three Strike Daggers she had just been done with.

"They're not alone," Mei said, her Astray Commando Type readying itself as three more Strike Daggers crashed through the forest and into view. One of them levelled the Hyper Bazooka it carried and fired; the round streaked past both Astray Commando Types as both Mei and Kyoukou leapt into action.

The 105 Aile Dagger brought both sabres crashing down on Mei's block as she attempted to dodge past the OMNI unit; Kyoukou and the Launcher 105 Dagger were trading shots with each other as both mobile suits skated across the ground in a high-speed shootout battle, their thrusters at maximum power to provide the lift they needed. The Strike Daggers hesitated for a moment before proceeding in a different direction, this time heading towards Morgenroete Inc.'s HQ again.

"Don't you _dare_ try that trick again!" Kyoukou said; her Astray Commando Type unhooked its beam boomerang and threw it with one swift strike, the beam weapon smashing into the side of the lead Strike Dagger and through its torso. For her momentary lapse, the Launcher 105 Dagger took aim; its shot struck the Astray's shoulder shield with a blast from its Agni hyper-impulse plasma launcher thanks to a quick-reaction block, slagging the protective equipment in a single blast.

Kyoukou's Astray Commando Type jettisoned the ruined shield and boosted forward; one hand reached for a beam sabre while another held out a Type-71-55 beam rifle, green bolts slashing through the air as the laid down cover fire. The Launcher 105 Dagger hid behind its shield as a beam shot struck its cover; the third Strike Dagger staggered as a beam cut through its left thigh, and a third beam narrowly missed the second Strike Dagger as it threw itself forward, ducking to avoid the blast.

The Launcher 105 Dagger steadied itself just as the Astray Commando Type leapt onto its shield and used it as a stepping-board to jump over the mobile suit, sending it off-balance with the sudden weight increase. The Strike Dagger fired, but the shot went wide as Kyoukou fired her Astray Commando Type's hip thrusters, the powerful rockets and the inertia of the jump sending her over the beam shot.

The Strike Dagger stepped back and held up its shield as the Astray Commando Type became silhouetted in the rising sun's halo glow; a beam shot struck the Strike Dagger's right arm, knocking it off-centre with an explosion, and the knee joints of the OMNI unit buckled and cracked as the Astray Commando Type came crashing down onto the mobile suit's head with its hardened knee block. The Astray jammed its beam rifle into the remains of the Strike Dagger's head and fired, jumping off the flaming metal corpse of the OMNI mobile suit just before it exploded.

The Aile 105 Dagger turned to fire at Kyoukou's Astray, which was getting up from its landing, when a flash bisected through its 58mm rifle, sending the barrel parts spinning through the air and into the muddy ground underneath both mobile suits. The Aile 105 Dagger barely avoided being impaled though the side as Mei thrust the _Sentou Ken _sideways, and followed up with a forward boost and a downward straight swing, which the backtracking Aile 105 Dagger managed to catch with a cross-block with both beam sabres.

The Aile 105 Dagger pushed upwards in a counter-move to knock the _Sentou Ken_ out of the Commando Type's hands, but the blade had been retracted by then, and the Aile 105 Dagger quickly found its right side-skirt armour plate flying off as the Astray Commando Type stabbed forward. Despite the swift sideways dodge by the Aile 105 Dagger, it wasn't fast enough to follow up as the Astray shifted its hands, and the Aile 105 Dagger toppled backwards as its failed attempt at a boosted jump found the _Sentou Ken_ effortlessly eating through the right portions of both the front and back armour plates along with the Aile 105 Dagger's entire right leg, the wasted limb flying into the ground in a spray of mud and rocks.

The Launcher 105 Dagger moved to support the falling Aile 105 Dagger even as Kyoukou drove forward, beam sabre in hand, and the plasma blade struck the mobile suit in the side, narrowly missing its cockpit. The Launcher 105 Dagger jerked once and staggered against the beam blade, but as Kyoukou prepared to drive the weapon through the mobile suit's cockpit, CIWS fire peppered the front of the Astray Commando Type, the bullet sparks blinding her unit's sensors as the Aile 105 Dagger grabbed its counterparts and with all of its thruster power, boosted into the sky.

No sooner had the two 105 Daggers escaped when a hail of beam blasts flew at the two Astray Commando Types from the side; Mei's Astray boosted to where her unit's shield lay on the ground, and both Astray Commando Types positioned themselves behind the single protective piece, returning fire with their beam rifles as best as they could at the three Strike Daggers that had sprung the ambush. For both Astray Commando Types, the Strike Daggers were too far away to effectively deal with them on the spot, but with enough time-

"Commander! From the-" Kyoukou's sentence was left unfinished as a Fortrestra Duel Dagger slammed into Kyoukou's Astray Commando Type from its right, sending the lighter mobile suit flying into the ground in a massive spray of detritus; a Sword 105 Dagger stepped out from the forest, blade drawn, and as Mei turned to meet the new challenge, another group of twelve Strike Daggers made straight for the centre of the island, the final defence line of Onogoro where Morgenroete's HQ was.

A beam shot perforated the lead Strike Dagger's torso, and the mobile suit slumped to the ground as a group of four Astray Commando Types emerged from the forest, the leading unit holding a Type-71-44 beam sniper rifle. The Strike Daggers' attempts to return fire were met with dismal failure, as the four Astray Commando Types cut them all down in less than thirty seconds in a close-range firefight.

The Sword 105 Dagger and Fortrestra Duel Dagger had, upon seeing their plans shot down, affected a hasty retreat, their booster lights flaring in the sky. Cayne Hastler and the rest of Axe Team landed around Kyoukou and Mei, taking up defensive positions.

"Well, that was a massive misjudgement on my choice of defending sector," Cayne said. "Are you alright, Sword Leader?"

"None the worse for the wear," Mei replied, as Kyoukou's Astray Commando Type got off the ground, sparks spraying from its joints. "But I'm afraid Sword Two is out of the fight. Take her with you to the rear lines."

"I am still unscathed, ma'am," Kyoukou began, making an effort to keep her voice level, but Mei cut her off.

"Your Astray says otherwise, and the squadron commander has control over her subordinate's cockpit camera systems, Sword Two, I can see you holding your broken arm in there," Mei said. "That kind of impact won't let you walk away uninjured."

"But-" Kyoukou began.

"Sword Leader is the expert when it comes to close-quarters combat and contact impacts; she's had the chance to display it many times during the Commando Type's test deployments," Cayne said. "If Sword Leader says you're out of the fight, then you're out."

"Go," Mei said, fully aware that time was running out. "Take this chance to move."

"Commander!" Kyoukou said, but Cayne's unit had already grabbed the motionless arm of her Astray Commando Type and boosted away. Not waiting for the five units to disappear over the horizon, she reached for the envelope that Cayne had given her and opened it, and quickly skimmed through the contents.

Her orders clear, Mei kept the envelope back into the secured pocket of her pilot suit. Reports of OMNI's second retreat were already flowing in; apparently, their Gundam units had failed to tie down the Freedom and Justice long enough for the OMNI forces to overwhelm the Orb defence line, but if anything was to be believed, the OMNI forces were preparing for one final push. Mei knew that the final attack would kill them all. After their resistance, OMNI would not let Representative Uzumi, her daughter, and the Orb government free. And the crew of the _Archangel_, which had survived the horror of JOSH-A, and had come to Orb seeking asylum, would face an even worse fate as traitors to OMNI.

The entirety of Orb's military was preparing to evacuate. Those on Onogoro Island were the most important; they were boarding the _Kusanagi_, Orb's most advanced space battleship, to safeguard the hope that one day, Orb would be able to regain its freedom again. The rest of the military were sent to the mainland, with clear orders not to resist capture, and not to fight to the death; they were there to ensure that the civilians still remaining on the nation's mainland could still enjoy a life of law and order.

The partings were bound to be painful. Mei sat in her cockpit, not bothering to join in the preparations; her part was not there. She imagined Cayne having to deal with an angry Kyoukou and afforded herself a small laugh; Cayne would not be happy at having to practically strap the younger officer into a chair somewhere to prevent her from leaving and returning to Mei's side.

Andi Sakovich and Kousaka Kae's teams were on the mainland in case of an attack on the cities themselves. Mei knew that when the time came, they would leave their units and slip into a civilian life to observe OMNI's ruling of their conquered nation; they would, in all effect, be spies in all but name. Hawaki and Houka Kananoh would be going with Cayne's team to _Ame-no-Mihashira_, Orb's remaining space asset, under the banner of the Sahaku family. They would not like being so close to a political lair, but Mei knew that with the fall of both Heliopolis, and now Orb's defeat as a nation, the only place left that could house the ideals of the Uzumi administration was the massive space station.

That left Mei Kenroukuen and Amaki Reishou's team. Amaki was a skilled pilot, and the members of the Orb Recon Brigade, First Squadron, were his handpicked warriors. She did not know what his intentions were or where his men and he were, but she had no doubt as to Amaki's capabilities to return to the battlefield again one day.

_Sending off the dawn's carriage…_

That left Mei. As she watched the dots on the tactical map regroup, the OMNI units arranged themselves into a line and held their location. Judging their difference in tactics from the previous day, Mei guessed that their three Gundam-class units had just retreated for ammunition, fuel or something similar. Any time now, the attack would renew itself.

…_Those orange petals are stirring somewhere even now…_

The Astray Commando Type started a slow walk towards the shore. Mei watched, silent, as the loud echoes of blast doors rolled over the land; from far away, she fancied seeing smoke roll out of the launch pads of the Kaguya Mass Driver; the _Kusanagi_ was preparing to launch.

… _The peaceful daybreak I once saw…_

A streak of light erupted into the sky; the _Archangel's_ Positron Beam Cannons, fired into the air, would disrupt regional airflow and allow it to return to space more easily.

… _Until it is placed in my hands once more,_

The _Kusanagi _began to move on the rails of the Kaguya Mass Driver; light flashed and beams streaked across the sky as the final battle of the Orb campaign, between the Freedom, Justice, and the three Gundam-class units used by OMNI, started up.

…_please don't let the light go out…_

The OMNI line began to move again. Mei watched as the dots started to shift towards the centre of the island, and over the ruined shores of Onogoro Island. From where she was, three Strike Daggers emerged, beam rifles at the ready. More fighter craft and mobile suits appeared, and soon Mei's screen was filled with enemy contacts.

_The wheels are turning._

The Astray Commando Type lifted its _Sentou Ken_, both in preparation and as a salute to the _Kusanagi_, which was now in the air and out of reach of the OMNI battlegroup_._ On open communications, with a yell that shook the psyche of every OMNI pilot within receiving range…

Mei Kenroukuen, a Commander of the Orb Union Military and lead pilot of the Sixth Armoured Squadron, Orb Recon Brigade, charged towards the enemy. She felt her feelings shift; it was beyond hatred, beyond anger… it was pure will, and a second before slamming into the enemy line, she spared a second to direct her thoughts towards the OMNI fleet stationed offshore.

_We will return. And we'll make you pay every bit you owe us for this_.

Onogoro became engulfed in light.

CE 71 June 16th, OMNI Battlegroup offshore Onogoro Island, Orb Union territorial waters

Morning 011 39

Murata Azrael felt the smug smile vanish off his face as his heart became gripped by a sudden feeling of unease. It was beyond his ability to describe; it was a sensation, a spear that suddenly pierced his previously-unshakable confidence. He suddenly felt that the operation might turn into one of abject failure-

The Rear Admiral commanding the battlegroup turned to look at him. Despite their differences, he had felt it too, and so had the command crew of the ship there were on. The bridge crew turned to look at each other in unease.

A bright light distracted Azrael from his troubles, and as every military facility on Onogoro Island exploded, and its Kaguya Mass Driver fragmented itself into the sea, Murata felt his face contort into an expression of bitter fury, at the realization that he, despite his successes in life, had failed to conquer this nation that he had thought tiny, insignificant, and naïve with its policies, to the point of deserving of extermination.

The Orb Union Subjugation Campaign had ended on Orb's terms.

**CE 71 June 18th, East Shore of Onogoro, Onogoro Island.**

**Morning 07 00**

Following Orb's surrender, OMNI had allowed the Earth Alliance to set up a provisional government for the island nation, in light of its parliament members sacrificing themselves in the self-destruction of Onogoro Island. Truth be told, the Earth Alliance couldn't be bothered now that Morgenroete Inc. and the Kaguya Mass Driver were in shambles, but they couldn't well go back on their words to provide peace and order if Orb surrendered; they had never stated that they would provide those _only_ if Orb had surrendered with the mass driver intact.

Kousaka Kae, former Commander of the Fourth Squadron of the Orb Recon Brigade, clambered over the rocks and reached the clear sandy beach, where she found the origin point of the half-dead signal from the ORB beacon she had picked up. As per her orders, she was to observe OMNI occupation over her own land. Not exactly the most honourable job, but one that needed doing. And when Mei had failed to submit a timed message report after the loss of Onogoro, she had been placed in charge of finding out what had happened on that island.

She approached the metal carcass, which was missing its limbs; the Astray Commando Type lay in the sand, one of its severed arms still maintaining its tight grip on the _Sentou Ken_ that it carried. Half its body was buried under the rolling waves, and the exposed torso and head were flecked with encrusted salt and other detritus from the explosion.

With a bit of trepidation, she hauled herself up to the top of the mobile suit… only to find an empty cockpit hatch. There was no sign of forced opening; it wasn't even an emergency hatch eject. It had been voluntarily opened the way it was designed to. From what she could see, no bloodstains were present in the cockpit.

The most likely reason was that Onogoro's self-destruct had flung the mobile suit here, damaged, wrecked, but still working, for a short time at least.

Kae allowed herself a grin, before looking up into the sky.

**CE 71 June 21th, OMNI AFRICOM Military Complex, Maxixe, Mozambique, South of Africa**

**Morning 09 22**

The OMNI clerk looked at the pilot's face once and then back at the documents. "Um…" the freckle-faced young man began. "Kaguya… Sakamoto Kaguya, Lieutenant, 226th Armor Tactics Squadron…"

"Yes," Kaguya replied. "Can I know where my next orders are?"

"Here," the clerk handed her an envelope. "Take this to the Third Wing, you should find your new posting and men there. Don't be late for the next flight of reinforcements for the Victoria operation."

Kaguya accepted the envelope and walked away. Apart from the _katana_ which she had sealed up in a carrier bag as a personal possession, andwith the shine maiden keychain she had hanging from her duffel bag; there was nothing to suggest that she wasn't an OMNI pilot by profession, one headed towards the reinforcement team as part of the OMNI operation to recapture the Victoria Supercomplex and the Habilis Mass Driver. It was a daunting task, considering that ZAFT had full command over the Supercomplex's defences, but OMNI was finally fighting on equal terms against ZAFT. They could not afford to fail.

Kaguya Sakamoto, the ORB agent formerly known as Mei Kenroukuen, strode towards her new destination. Her orders after the fall of Orb were to blend into OMNI, affirm its policies, and feed the in-exile elements of Orb those information.

She intended to make sure that OMNI's secrets were hollowed out when Orb returned, so that her comrades could pick at the carcass of the over-bloated world military organization.

Fighting ZAFT was not a concern; she felt that the war was also partially their fault, with their heavy-handed methods of cutting off the supply of refined products to Earth, the place that had built up the PLANTs in the first place. Regardless of which idiot super-nation decided to strive to be on top of the other, Orb remained her first concern.

The land that had accepted her, she who was neither Natural nor Coordinator, and feared by both who found out about her abilities.

_We'll make you pay every bit you owe us for this_.

_Afterword: _

_This one deals with the invasion of Orb and the start of the subsequent events that followed; Orb under OMNI's rule, as well as the opening fires of the Third Battle of Victoria. _

_While the anime covered a lot on Orb's fall, I wanted a third perspective. I apologize if anyone was expecting a grunt's view of the combat or if Orb having a secret black-ops force is a bit of a tall ale to believe, but I believed that the Earth Alliance and OMNI, crazy as they are, wouldn't be that mad to just fling troops into combat… I hope. Having ORB as part of the story isn't that far-off; in the Astray series, the Sahaku twins of the Orb government are known for the impressive arsenal under their command, and they weren't always using it for the well-being of the entire of Orb._


	15. Chapter 15: Assault Horizon

_Author's Note:_

_This fanfic is to write upon some of the events in Gundam SEED and SEED Destiny that are not touched upon or mentioned in-series, but their dates are listed on GundamWikia and are thus treated as part of canon. They are therefore based upon actual happenings in the Cosmic Era universe, but the events within them are open to interpretation. This fanfic is also an attempt at showcasing a "what-if" of all sides involved in the wars, and how some of the events within the show might have come to be._

**Gundam SEED: Tales of the Cosmic Era**

**Chapter 15: Assault Horizon**

**CE 71 June 18th, Lilongwi Outskirts, Malawi, Southern African Union**

**Morning 11 56**

Ash Sorbough, a Lieutenant of the OMNI African Expeditionary Army's 2nd Division, 44th Squadron "Watchmen", sat in the cockpit of his Buster Dagger, slowly scrolling through walls of text that outlined the machine's capabilities. The electronic manual was useful for making quick references to, but Ash was a person who preferred getting hands-on with things than have theory upon theory piled on him, and the constant waiting was grating on his nerves.

Not that he could complain. The current situation on the African continent was tense; with ZAFT's African forces and the units under OMNI AFRICOM in a standoff since the capture of the Habilis mass driver several months back, both sides had become enclosed in their own world, engaging in small-scale skirmishes and defences while the rest of the Bloody Valentine War raged around them.

The southern hemisphere battles, led by the roving battleship _Archangel_.

The Battle of JOSH-A, where many of the Eurasian Federation's finest lost their lives.

The fall of Panama to the vengeful ZAFT counterattack, and finally OMNI's Pacific Fleet being sent to secure the Kaguya mass driver at the Orb Union, only for the nation to destroy it rather than let the Earth Alliance put it to use.

With all the battles going on, OMNI was hanging by a thread; if they still wanted to enjoy their numerical superiority again, they had to find a way to leverage the war in their favour. And now, here they were, on a desperate mission to reclaim what they had once lost.

He had heard of many stories both good and bad about the Orb conflict, but then again the Orb Union had declared neutrality in a conflict that threatened to engulf all Naturals in the Earth Sphere. The island nation was a land of apathy, he thought. Not more, not less.

A sharp beeping took his attention to the Buster Dagger's screen. With the upcoming operation to seize the Habilis Mass Driver and the ZAFT-held Victoria Supercomplex, OMNI was quickly relocating most of its troops to Africa in preparation for a large-scale offensive. Tanks, aircraft, mobile suits, _everything_. Ash himself had just been rotated from North America to Mozambique five days prior, and the hot weather had threatened to put him out of action during the first week.

Although OMNI had been fielding the rare few mobile suits captured from ZAFT since the start of the war, and later engineering their own limited-production units as the conflict progressed, Victoria was where the test truly was. Ash had watched the Panama battle on live feed; although the place was defended with Strike Daggers fresh off the production line, Ash had noticed that apart from the Strike Dagger's poor EMP shielding, the defenders also lacked specialized teams to strike deep into the core of the enemy to prevent the EMP attack in time.

And so here he was, slightly over a week after the OMNI vanguard marched from OMNI AFRICOM in Maxixe, Mozambique. With the decision to increase the already-spectacular amount of funding the mobile suit development program got, OMNI had decided to procure specialised mobile suits for the sake of improving combat efficiency.

Still, Ash wished that they had given him more time to practice. He fumbled a bit with the controls as he brought the powerful sensors of the Buster Dagger to bear on the source… and saw his targets.

Four BuCUEs approached in an arrowhead formation, all armed with missile launchers. No doubt they were part of a ZAFT raiding team sent to test the advancing OMNI tide. If they bypassed here, the BuCUEs would have an open shot at nearly seven thousand OMNI troops, as well as scores of battle tanks and mobile suits that were temporarily encamped some five kilometres behind his position.

Granted, Ash estimated that the casualties wouldn't exceed more than a few hundred before OMNI beat back the raiders, but if anything, Ash's previous job as a Moebius pilot, before being rotated for MS training, had taught him that life was precious.

Too precious, in fact… but that only applied to one's own side.

The Buster Dagger, with most of its frame hidden in a small ravine, deployed its 94mm beam rifle and combined it with its 350mm gun launcher, forming the Hyper Impulse Long-Range Sniper Rifle that both the Buster Gundam and the Buster Dagger were famous for. Ash waited as the lead BuCUE drifted to his sight as he steadied his breathing, easing his targeting reticule onto the BuCUE.

The Buster Dagger's weapons were unlike any other; unlike the beam rifles of the Dagger variants, both the 94mm beam rifle and the 350mm gun launcher were original armaments of the Buster Gundam; in its HI Sniper Rifle configuration, it was considered the ultimate sniping weapon.

The only thing that prevented them from being deployed everywhere was power requirements; a pilot could still reach out and slap a GINN with a Pardus missile launcher with ease, but just eighteen shots and its battery would be sucked dry. As well, a Strike Dagger could only be armed with either the 94mm or the 350mm, and neither were that widespread as to allow just any Strike Dagger squadron to equip them.

Plans were initially made for a "Buster Striker" Striker Pack for the 105 Daggers, but that was abandoned as well due to time constrains, which was why the specialized Buster Dagger was made; loosely described, Ash could say that he was piloting a Buster Gundam right now, just built with a different, more cost-effective frame, and lacking the famous Phase-Shift Armor.

The Buster Dagger emerged from cover and fired, the high-powered green beam lancing out. The lead BuCUE took the shot head-on before it could evade, crashing into the ground in a splendid display of flying mechanical parts and armour plates, its missile launcher ripping off its back from the rolling impacts.

The other three BuCUEs scattered and launched missiles; unfazed, Ash disengaged both rifles and readied the Buster Dagger's other weapon, its 350mm gun launcher, making sure that it was loaded with airburst munitions. The rounds dispersed fragments in an explosion, acting both as buckshot, and as makeshift anti-air artillery; in a pinch, he could use it both as a close-range assault weapon and as an anti-missile defence.

Now, Ash fired three rounds in quick succession into the air. The fact that the BuCUEs were just reacting to his rifle fire and hadn't actually discovered his exact location yet was a boon; the missiles were nothing more than a show of force for the area, and were not actually targeting his unit proper.

The rounds detonated, and the missiles that were in danger of hitting the Buster Dagger exploded in the air as the fragments perforated their protective casings. At the same time, Ash fired the beam rifle a second time; at this range, he no longer needed the HI Sniper Rifle.

The shot melted the left legs of a second BuCUE from under it, and the machine crashed, momentum carrying it forward, even as the evasive manoeuvres of the two remaining BuCUEs got more radical.

As the missiles exploded on the ground around him, Ash brought up a communication link. With the dust covering his direct vision, and the mobile suits too far away for heat sensors to be effective in the African environment, his other hope was a RF-109 Farseer EWACS aircraft currently flying high up in the sky, coordinating the various mobile suits spread around on this defensive line.

Normally, flying this close to ZAFT airspace was suicide, but right now the airspace could be said to be unclaimed. ZAFT could afford to take far less losses than OMNI; even the troops in the captured Supercomplex had been drawn thin for their offensive in JOSH-A, and the horrifying losses meant that ZAFT's Earth-based army was now critically understaffed. They had barely enough air forces left to patrol the area around Lake Victoria, much less spare some for long-range raiding forces.

A third beam from the 94mm rifle lanced out and struck a BuCUE, the powerful energy beam boiling away layers of composite armour and materials to cook the screaming pilot inside the quadrupled mobile suit. The BuCUE fragmented as explosions tossed pieces off its frame, which tumbled into the sun-baked ground in a fiery display.

The fourth BuCUE crested the small incline of the local terrain and leapt over the rock cover to come face-to-face with the Buster Dagger. Ash pursed his lips in a look of concentration as the BuCUE, beam sabres activated, leapt into the shallow ravine that had concealed the Buster Dagger and jumped straight at Ash, intent on avenging its comrades.

The BuCUE was thrown back into the ravine wall, as the left shoulder cover on the Buster Dagger opened, firing a missile point-blank at the BuCUE. The impact stopped it just long enough for Ash to activate the back manipulators of the Buster Dagger. Even as its guns holstered themselves, the Buster Dagger drew its arm-mounted beam sabre in a swift cut to the right, removing the BuCUE's head at the neck and its front legs, before turning the beam blade downwards, stabbing it through its back into its cockpit.

"This is Watcher Three to Watcher Leader" Ash said, as the Buster Dagger powered down its beam sabre. "Raiding party destroyed at Watchpost Charlie-Three."

"Watcher Leader here. Good work. Tomahawk Leader and Crusade Leader have reported similar engagements at Watchposts Alpha-All, Bravo-All, Echo-Two and Golf-Three along the first defensive line. All enemies neutralized. Keep at it until 13 00 hours. Another shift has been organized to replace you all."

"Roger," Ash replied. With the OMNI vanguard marching out to keep ZAFT on their toes, they had to encamp somewhere while receiving reinforcements. Already OMNI was launching long-range strikes on the Victoria Supercomplex, but with ZAFT willing to risk leaving the Gibraltar Base open by pulling out of Europe so as to consolidate their forces in Victoria, the strikes were minor stings at best, and the former Eurasian Federation base had something that could decimate all of them.

The MR-6 bombardment railgun.

The original reason for OMNI's victory in the First Battle of Victoria, ZAFT commandoes disabled the underwater power generators housed in Lake Victoria during the Second Battle of Victoria, freezing up the MR-6s and preventing a successful defence from being mounted against the Desert Tiger's backup forces.

Ash knew that it would be the height of naivety to assume that ZAFT wouldn't have repurposed the guns to their advantage. Capable of firing shells of self-forging fragmentation pieces, high-explosive rounds, missile-carrying cluster warheads for anti-air or anti-ground defences, and even large armour-piercing rounds against the land carriers of ZAFT, with a range of up to 850-kilometers, the five MR-6 guns, arranged around the diameter of the Victoria Supercomplex and the Habilis mass driver, were the Eurasian Federation's greatest defensive weapon. Were OMNI to attack blindly, they would only be decimated like the first ZAFT offensive was.

Ash sat back into his cockpit, his mind wandering again in light of the lack of enemy activity. The MR-6s were only plagued by a low firing rate and the high energy requirements; as well, ZAFT was unlikely to deploy forward observers, which would mark down the guns' range to somewhere within 400 to 500 kilometres. Despite that, it still had an impressive range and power that made air assault near-suicidal, and ground assault too painful to bear.

OMNI needed a mass driver to send a supply lifeline up to their lunar bases, however, and the Kaohsiung mass driver was too far in the east to take quickly with the scattered forces they had. Regardless of how painful it was, OMNI had no choice… but to meet ZAFT head-on for a third time at Victoria.

**CE 71 June 20th, OMNI Firebase Kilo-Main, Mbeya Outskirts, Tazania, South African Union**

**Morning 08 34**

Ash woke from his sleep to a steady beat of mechanical hangar sounds in his Buster Dagger, his body bearing the usual aches of having been constrained to a single position for too long. He had barely gotten more than two hours of sleep from yesterday night's guard duty.

Since three days ago, ZAFT has ceased its raiding strikes, instead withdrawing its forces to Lake Victoria's vicinity. The OMNI African Expeditionary Army was split into two Task Forces; Task Force Lima, a Eurasian Federation army group cobbled together from whatever they could spare from the frontlines surrounding Gibraltar, were marching in from the north, while the current force approaching from the south, dubbed Task Force Kilo, and Ash's current assignment, had parked its forces on the proverbial doorstep of the Victoria Supercomplex's railguns. Mixed in with them were the forces from OMNI AFRICOM, a tattered bunch well-known for their tenacity against the ZAFT forces and terrorists in the region.

The higher-ups were now preparing for a plan that would stretch the limits of OMNI's power. Task Force Kilo had just received two GAT-X255 Forbidden Blue amphibious assault mobile suits and ten GAT-706S Deep Forbidden aquatic mobile suits. OMNI intended to return punch for punch; drop the Forbidden variants into the waters of Lake Victoria, and have them seek out the underwater reactor structures. Once disabled, OMNI could march right up to the Supercomplex's doorstep and reclaim the mass driver.

Of course, a solo airdrop this deep into enemy territory would be suicide. The team that Ash was a part of would also be joining the operation as a vanguard force, to distract the enemy. If they were successful in their mission, OMNI could follow up with a swift one-two punch of reinforcement drops, first from orbit, then from the air, followed by conventional forces approaching from the front, which would, theoretically, allow them to take the area with impunity.

Of course, Ash knew that real life was rarely that good.

Despite being part of the offensive, that had not made Ash immune to sentry duty on the defensive lines yet, something that he grumbled to himself about as he clambered out of the cockpit.

"'Morning, Ash," a woman's voice called out from underneath the mobile suit's cockpit. "Slept well?"

"'Morning, Major," Ash replied. "What news of the front?"

Major Kahora Zashe, Watchmen Squadron's commanding officer, crossed her arms. "Nothing so far," she said, frowning at Ash's dishevelled looks. "Why didn't you return to sleep in bunk last night?"

"Too tired," Ash replied, letting the wire winch drop him down slowly from the cockpit of the mobile suit to the ground. "And besides, all the commanders were really fired up since yesterday night's meeting… I really thought we were going to war today."

"Don't be an idiot," Kahora replied. "They've just finished retrofitting the first of the transports for additional stealth capabilities; there's no way they could activate the plan that quickly. They're only fired up because they're kept leashed here while the enemy sits in their own castle."

Ash had nearly forgotten that many of the soldiers of Task Force Kilo were OMNI personnel forced out from the Victoria Supercomplex during the Second Battle of Victoria; they had something of a personal vendetta against the ZAFT defenders for this battle. "So we're stuck here until they get the balls to move out?" Ash said, scratching his head.

Kahora grimaced. "That's a pretty vulgar way to word things. And go clean yourself up, Lieutenant, you look like a slob."

A good half an hour and a hot breakfast later, Ash returned to the makeshift hangar. Work had to be done, and the temperatures of the African continent meant that Ash constantly encountered problems with the Buster Dagger's 94mm beam rifle. Excessive ambient heat caused by the hot environment would often distort the beam's path of fire unless the power output was strong enough to punch through all the heat inteference, an example being the Hyper Impulse Sniper Rifle; even so, the effective ranges of all beams weapons in this environment were reduced by up to a quarter, depending on the weapon type.

Even when not in HI Sniper Rifle mode, the 94mm rifle's high output meant that the weapon's focusing coil would often be bent out of position due to the greatly-increased heat. Not only would the beam be out of focus, constant reheating and bending of the focusing coil by successive shots would cause the beam's bending trajectory to become random; one moment it would miss to the left, another moment to the right, and so on. It wasn't by much, but at the ranges he fought in, just five millimetres off would make a huge problem.

Ash would fix that problem in a heartbeat if he knew how. A week back, during the advance towards the Supercomplex, a Buster Dagger from another squadron had been destroyed because its beam had missed what should have been a lethal shot; the back box retrieved from that unit had shown, in excruciating detail, as what should have ended the BuCUE's charge instead became the herald of death for the Buster Dagger's pilot. Ash had no intention of dying out here in that whimsical manner.

Clambering into the cockpit, Ash started up the system and began running a systems check on the Buster Dagger. As the computer retrieved the records of the 94mm rifle it was equipped with for him to study its performance, Ash's mind wandered.

It was no secret that the Atlantic Federation had, over the years, become increasingly hardliner on things it didn't approve on. Starting from the first years of the Cosmic Era, the Atlantic Federation had always looked to space as their way of regaining their pre-CE glory days. The supernation had poured the greatest amount of funds into the construction of space assets, and eventually the PLANTs, but returns, like all great investments, were slow and easily lost; with the government forced to answer the people's demands for instant results, it was hard not to slip up here and there, and the Atlantic Federation's financial recovery was slow and fraught with the danger of broken promises from the government to the people.

Added to that was the constant stress of having to complete with the United States of South America and the Eurasian Federation on the economic battlefield, then the troubles that its social policies raised amongst its population; with those, the Atlantic Federation had been on a slow but steady decline over the past fifty years of the Cosmic Era. Fortifying their military was a half-hearted attempt at keeping their national pride and internal financial troubles afloat by trying to give everyone something to do, but unfortunately, it only caused the wrong kind of people to sign up.

And that was when the troubles began. With Coordinators as an outlet, the people had let themselves be led by the noose into this war, by the people who would eventually make an organization like Blue Cosmos legal in the Atlantic Federation.

With nowhere to spend its military force, the Atlantic Federation, now helmed by anger, was ready to find a reason to spend its killing wares, even if was for the reason of spending more money to make more, anything to keep the country's financial status up.

Ash remembered being at the controls of his Moebius mobile armour when he first signed on the military in CE 68, feeling like the king of the world as he chased older single-seat craft through space, shooting down terrorists, insurgents, and the mercenaries employed by upstart lunar cities who thought that they were good enough to become fully independent. He thought himself unbeatable, and his life unbreakable.

Then came ZAFT. Like all, Ash had thought of the Coordinators' warnings and threats as hot air. His perception would only be changed when he had a chance to face them during the Battle of Yggdrasil; of all of the sixty-odd pilots deployed from the _Agamemnon_-class he was stationed on, only him and four other pilots made it back alive.

Ash himself was injured beyond recognition; he had spent the better part of CE 70 as a bandaged cripple, feeling his pride and ego drain down the catheter he had attached to him until he was well enough to walk again. He had decided that he wanted out, when he heard about OMNI's mobile suit development program from an old friend in the military.

It had taken him a long while, but once he managed to get himself selected for a conversion training course into a mobile suit pilot, he had found a reason to continue fighting. He reasoned that it was acceptable; after all, ZAFT's actions had taken away a large part of who he once was, and he fully intended to reclaim each piece back. He wasn't in this for the racial hatred; he was in it for his personal pride, and to secure his own future. He didn't want to end up on the streets as a has-been emptying dustbins.

Meeting Kahora Zashe had been an added bonus. They had met back when he was looking for a mobile suit posting; she had been the recruiting officer then, and he remembered clearly how she had told him to get out of her office when he had barged in, demanding a place in the next mobile suit course. He had made it, and it was fuel added to the fire that she had been assigned to lead his class through their conversion course. Throughout the days that followed, however, Ash had slowly come to realize her better side, especially when it came to instructing newcomers on mobile suit operating systems; when they were both posted to the same squadron in the campaign to retake Africa, they watched each other's backs whenever they could.

There was one aspect that he held dear above all, however. Kahora resembled his late sister in the way she looked at people; searching for a way to bridge conversations, always receptive of the feelings of others. Ash's sister had died days after the April Fool's Crisis struck; then a patient in a hospital ICU, there was nothing to be done for her as the emergency generator that supplied power to the artificial respirator died. Ash took comfort from the fact that her death had been relatively quick.

It was for this reason Ash had fought; he saw it as a second chance to right his life. After this, Ash planned to-

"Lieutenant?" Major Zashe's voice echoed upwards and into the cockpit of the Buster Dagger. "Lieutenant!"

Ash broke his reverie, quashed his previous thoughts, and stuck his head out. "Something the matter, Major?"

"There's been a report from a recon group out in space. ZAFT space forces are preparing a drop operation that, at earliest, can be carried out on the 26th," Kahora said. "On our side, this means that Victoria has to be ours by the 25th."

"Why the rush?" Ash asked. "The Luna drop fleets won't be able to arrive that quickly-"

"Would you rather face a Victoria Supercomplex reinforced by nearly fifty mobile suits, various auxiliary forces, all manned by angry Coordinators still smarting for revenge at JOSH-A?" Kahora asked, raising an eyebrow.

Ash frowned. "But that would mean that… we won't be having orbital drop support."

"There's no time to take land piece by piece, like what we've been doing for the past two weeks or so." Kahora said. "So far, we've been fighting this war as though we had all the time in the world. Now that ZAFT has revealed that they're getting ready to move up their pace, we have to move as well."

"What about reinforcements?" Ash asked. "The orbital drop reinforcements would have hit at almost the same time as us! Pushing the aerial reinforcements forward would mean that they have to wait until the railguns and defence turret networks are offline before they could even think of flying in this direction. And both Task Force Kilo and Lima would need a full day to move their forces close to the Supercomplex; the assault team is going to get slaughtered regardless of the mission success!"

Kahora shrugged, although her face told Ash volumes about her personal thoughts. "We haven't got a choice. We can take them out now and accelerate OMNI's plans to regain control of Earth by several months…"

Ash felt a chill down his spine. Kahora's stare had something inside that changed his mind. "… or we will drown in the shame that we gave less than those who went before us," she pointed to his Buster Dagger, "Despite having more."

**CE 71 June 21st, OMNI Firebase Delta-Main, Kisangani Outskirts, Democratic Republic of the Congo, South African Union**

**Afternoon 16 12**

Guy Leon, a 2nd Lieutenant of OMNI's Fourth MS Battalion, sat on the top of his mobile suit's shoulders, overlooking the clear blue skies. Around him, OMNI staff bustled around setting up the complex, the better to hold their troops in while they waited for the next time to move.

Guy was far from being a radical; for him, being in OMNI was part and parcel of a job, and as long as it fed his wife and child, it was enough. It was his connection to this place. Guy had served through both the First and Second Battles of Victoria as a tank commander, and later at the Saragossa Defence Line as a company commander, and he had been lucky enough to get out of both places relatively unscathed.

_It's been a long road, William. I'm sorry that I wasn't there at El Alamein_… Guy thought as he dusted off his uniform; someone had just called for him and he wanted to look presentable. _But I swear, on the name of the 4__th__ Tank Corps, that we'll retake Victoria._

Firebase Delta-Main was the primary holding location of the brigade-sized Task Force Delta, the newest reinforcement group sent to the African continent. Accompanied by the Eurasian Federation's Second Fleet, they had punched through ZAFT resistance in the Casablanca Sea for a quick-action landing operation at Port Harcourt, in Nigeria.

The Task Force had headed south-east towards Lake Victoria, encountering light resistance along the way; ZAFT reinforcements from Gibraltar were stuck when Eurasian Federation forces launched a diversionary campaign to keep ZAFT from reinforcing its African front, which had been declining since the death of the Desert Tiger, ZAFT's famed commander who was previously posted here to watch over their African forces.

OMNI intended to crush the defenders of the Victoria Supercomplex in a three-way pincer move in-between Task Forces Delta, Lima and Kilo, forcing them to either flee the base, or to divide their attention, and by extension their forces, in a fruitless holding action. However, currently all three Task Forces were stalemated outside the firing range of the Supercomplex's MR-6 guns, unable to advance further thanks to the threat of long-range bombardment.

"Sir," Guy said, as an officer approached him.

"At ease," his squadron commander replied. "How do you find the performance of the Strike Dagger so far?"

"Excellent, sir," Guy replied. "It's not heavy enough like the GINN or Fortrestra models, but the weapons it can carry pack a strong enough punch to go toe-to-toe with some of the heavier and more well-armed ZAFT mobile suits."

"Hmm," his commander noted.

"Do you need me to gather the team to receive their new orders, sir?"

"No, there're no new orders," the officer replied. "It's just that… I never thought I'd live to see this day."

"The day when we finally have the power to stand equal to the Coordinators on the battlefield?" Guy replied. "Truth be told, sir, I never expected such a day at all."

The officer laughed. "Why the pessimistic view?"

"I've always thought we would corner the Coordinators with sheer numbers," Guy said. "To actually be able to fight on par with any ZAFT pilot is already surreal." He clenched his fists, remembering the feeling days ago when Task Force Delta had encountered a ZAFT picket force.

He had fought and scored his first mobile suit kill there; a GINN without a rifle had attempted to take his Strike Dagger in close combat, and Guy had gutted his enemy with a beam sabre, avoiding the mobile suit's ponderous strikes. "OMNI's way of warfare is changing drastically, and will probably continue to do so for quite some time. Even though we have all these new mobile suits…"

His superior nodded once, looking towards the direction of the Supercomplex. "JOSH-A, isn't it? With the Atlantic Federation being so controlling, there's no telling what they might do at this battle if they think that we're not getting enough of an edge." The officer sighed. "I wonder who keeps approving the promotion of lunatics into the upper echelon of the Atlantic and OMNI armed forces."

Like most of OMNI, especially soldiers from the Eurasian Federation, or the Republic of East Asia, Guy was wary of any future large-scale operations made by OMNI, especially since nowadays the Atlantic Federation's forces made up a large part of the troops available.

Nobody could afford another Pyrrhic victory like the one at JOSH-A, and rumours had circulated that an uncompleted Cyclops System had been built underneath the Supercomplex; Guy shuddered to think of what could happen if Atlantic Federation agents got to the interior and OMNI couldn't hold their ground; they could set off a chain reaction that might engulf at least half the base, and all in the name of defeating ZAFT. Granted, losing the Habilis mass driver would benefit no one, but after the debacle at JOSH-A-

His superior shook his head. "No sense thinking about espionage and the selfish politics of the upper echelons, Guy. C'mon, let's see how the maintenance crew are doing."

**CE 71 June 24th, En-route to Lake Victoria, Shinyanga, Tazania, South African Union**

**Night 23 48**

Ash slept fitfully, waking up again just to peek at his wristwatch, before closing his eyes and shifting his body to get whatever comfort he could extract from the cramped cockpit seat of his Buster Dagger.

It had taken the crew the better part of four days to refit all the airborne carrier aircraft that they had; now with extra armour and stealth coatings, Ash was in one of them, preparing to engage in an operation that would change the tide of battle.

The fourteen transport aircraft cut through the wind noiselessly, escorted by several flights of Spearhead fighters and a squadron of Farseer EWACS aircraft. Ash had activated the video feed earlier, and even from this high up and far away he could see the lights of the Victoria Supercomplex, the sprawling fortress-city that the Eurasian Federation had built. A few patches were dark; ZAFT had no need for most of the recreational areas on the base, and a good number of other facilities were wrecked in the second battle.

The areas that were lighted, however, signified trouble to the airborne attackers; those were where the radar facilities, ammunition depots and other essential infrastructure were located. The five cylinder-shaped hatches leading to the underground storage hangars for the MR-6 railguns were visible as well, their surface openings illuminated by red and blue marker lights on the closed alloy blast doors that kept the railguns safe from wind, rain, and other environmental abuse.

Luck was with OMNI on the basis that in their haste to take the base, ZAFT had destroyed many of their defences to get in, and hadn't the time nor resources to repair all of them. The previously overlapping air defence net of the Victoria Supercomplex was no longer present, with many of its anti-air turrets destroyed, and that was not counting other fixed defences that were left in place as the Eurasian Federation upgraded and added to the base after Victoria's first battle. The OMNI strike group had taken that advantage, weaving through the minute holes in the radar and anti-air coverage to bring them as close as possible to the lakeside.

"Watcher Leader here," Kahora's voice echoed in Ash's comms unit. "We've just passed the airspace in Mwanza; the Tridents and Black Sabres Squadrons will be initiating combat manoeuvres shortly before us. All Watchmen, status report."

"Watcher Two here", Ash said, resigning himself to his feelings of unrest. "All green."

"Watcher Three here, everything is a-okay."

"Watcher Four reporting. Ready for action."

The Watchmen were a four-pilot squadron armed with specialized Dagger variants; Ash, the team marksman, piloted a Buster Dagger, while Kahora used a 105 Dagger outfitted with the Launcher Striker pack. Watcher Three and Four were using Duel Daggers outfitted with Fortrestra armour.

"Stick with the original plan; cause as much damage as possible until the underwater teams report all-clear, and hold the line long enough for them to bug out before we break east ourselves," Kahora said. "Avoid engaging in shooting matches; as much as possible, try to keep mobile and at range to make it easy to diseng-"

The panicked voice of the carrier plane's comms operator interrupted the Watchmen's briefing. "This is Blackjack Three to Watchmen, Deep Eye has detected enemy aerial asset launch! I repeat, Deep Eye has detected enemy aerial asset launch!"

Kahora scowled, as much at the operator's blatant lack of discipline as it was at ZAFT's timely response; just a bit more, and they could drop into the heart of the Supercomplex itself, as opposed to hitting the ground on the outskirts of the base's South Wing. "Watcher Leader, I acknowledge. Watcher Leader to Watchmen, you heard Blackjack Three; ZAFT has a welcome party going on and they're not going to pull any punches. We're going to do a combat drop; be prepared for aerial combat as well."

"Watcher Two, I read you," Ash replied, as Watcher Three and Four gave their acknowledgements. Even as Ash recalibrated the thrusters of the Buster Dagger for aerial performance, the rear bay doors of the carrier plane opened up to reveal a barely-visible ground, and Ash could see ZAFT DINNs arcing from below and behind the transport fleet to attempt an intercept run on the aerial forces.

Eight 105 Daggers dropped out into the night sky; all equipped with Aile Striker Packs. The airborne mobile suits quickly angled into position and sped off on an intercept path towards a squadron of approaching DINNs, as Spearhead fighters zipped through the air, arranging themselves into interceptor formations to square off against other approaching ZAFT aerial forces.

"Looks like the Blast Guards are going to have the time of their lives tonight," Ash remarked about the Aile 105 Dagger squadron, as the mobile suits of the Watchmen prepared to drop out of the carrier plane. "Haven't seen the promise of a furball like this after Yggdrasil."

"Well, there was Nova, but hardly anyone remembers it," Watcher Three replied. "The Republic of East Asia doesn't really like to showcase what happened the-"

"Cut the chitchat, Watchmen," Kahora said. "Engage drop!"

One by one, the mobile suits of the Watchmen stepped off into the night. They tumbled through the air before stabilizing their position and speed using their machines' thrusters. Around them, OMNI mobile suits of various make dropped through the air. Gunfire and missiles crisscrossed the empty space in-between both sides, lighting up the surroundings with brief flashes.

The Fortrestra Duel Daggers of Watchmen Three and Four dropped faster towards the ground thanks to their added mass, with Kahora's 105 Launcher Dagger following, and finally Ash's Buster Dagger.

"Watcher Two, anything suspicious on your sensors?"

Ash frowned as he continued to calibrate the Buster Dagger's long-range sensors. "It's like a beehive down there. Movement has been detected at the MR-6 railgun emplacements as well; ZAFT is probably going to deploy them to head off any reinforcements we might have coming here after us."

Kahora weighed her choices. On one hand, gunning for the railguns would be a risky but efficient manoeuvre; with the guns out, the aerial reinforcements that were waiting could immediately proceed towards the Supercomplex, rather than loiter outside of its defensive range; however, if ZAFT were to follow up on their orbital drop, the loss of the MR-6s would make their success at defending the facility 50-50 at best.

On the other hand, waiting for the Trident and Black Sabres squadrons to complete their mission would allow them to take the base largely intact and without much rebuilding to be done; Kahora doubted that ZAFT was as insane as to rig the entire place to blow. That also unfortunately meant that reinforcements would likely be late, and the chances of the strike teams' surviving this mission –_at all- _would be significantly lower.

"Watchmen," Kahora said. "Hit the edge of the Supercomplex and move in. All weapons free; but take note that the railguns and facilities above Class-3 are not to be fired upon."

Ash made a sound of discontentment. Class-3 facilities included fuel pumps and tanks; if ZAFT caught on to their engagement restrictions, it would make it much harder to fight them on equal footing. A beeping alert pulled Ash away from his thoughts and back towards the screen, as ZAFT CAVs armed with missile launchers began slinging shots at the OMNI mobile suits dropping through the air.

"Throwing flares," Watcher Three said, his Fortrestra Duel Dagger cutting its thrusters; shoulder-mounted short tubes fired warheads that scattered burning spheres into the air. A few missiles veered off-course as the mobile suit's head tracked another missile, its CIWS guns roaring.

Kahora's 105 Launcher Dagger aimed its Agni hyper-impulse plasma cannon; the area filled with blinding light as the multi-phase beam lanced towards the ground, and Kahora fired the mobile suit's thrusters to counter the recoil as the mobile suit swept its fire across an entire group of CAVs, destroying the lightly-armoured support vehicles. "Watcher Leader to all units, start a fast drop. Get to ground and secure cover!"

"Watcher Two, on it," Ash said, cutting power to the Buster Dagger's thrusters. The rest of the Watchmen's mobile suits cut their thrusters as well, and Ash felt a sensation of his stomach disappearing into his torso as the Buster Dagger's descent rate sped up, and the mobile suit began dropping like a pile of rocks. Ash clenched his teeth to avoid letting his gag reflex overtake him as the ground rushed up to meet the mobile suit.

The Fortrestra Duel Daggers reached ground first, the heavy mobile suits cracking the ground and leaving massive imprints on the concrete flooring. Watcher Four stabilized her mobile suit, the assault unit listing to one side as a round struck the ground near its landing point.

Watcher Four returned fire, the round from the Fortrestra Duel Dagger's beam rifle striking the leg of a GINN OCHER; the ZAFT mobile suit collapsed to its knee, damaged but still moving, when Watcher Three fired again, a railgun round slamming into the torso of the ZAFT mobile suit, sending the disabled unit toppling backwards.

"Watcher Three, landing zone secured."

"Watcher Four, area is currently clear."

Kahora landed her 105 Launcher Dagger. "Spread yourselves out and advance cautiously; keep within the same bounds as each other. Watcher Two, set yourself up somewhere where you can see the field, and provide cover fire."

"Roger that, Watcher Leader," Ash replied.

Ash's Buster Dagger re-ignited its thrusters and touched down gently; not on the ground, but atop a building that he suspected used to be a HQ asset for the Supercomplex's South Wing. The impact of the landing barely registered as he surveyed the area, looking for his roost. "Watcher Two to Watcher Leader, roger."

Almost immediately, he found his first target; a pair of BuCUEs advanced on Watcher Three, which was in the most isolated position, beam sabres activated. One of the BuCUEs crumpled in a heap to the ground as Ash's shot from its 94mm beam rifle tore a long gash into the side of its body, and Watcher Three slammed his Fortrestra Duel Dagger into the second BuCUE, throwing it to the ground before hitting it dead centre with a beam rifle shot.

"Watcher Two to Watcher Four, hold your position… and done," Ash said, his second shot striking a ZuOOT; the mobile suit's front exploded, and the metal carcass leaned into the side of a hangar.

Ash was about to switch locations when the warning sounded. The Buster Dagger leapt off the building just as two dozen high explosive shells hit where it was standing a few seconds ago; a DINN descended out of the skies, its shotgun slinging anti-armour buckshot rounds towards Ash.

"Watcher Two!" Kahora said; turning her 105 Launcher Dagger around, its 120mm vulcan cannon began to spin. "Fall back!"

"This is Watcher Two, I got this," Ash said, the Buster Dagger landing on the roof of a hangar; the lightweight roofing collapsed, and the Buster Dagger sunk halfway into the damaged building. Ignoring his precarious situation, Ash brought the mobile suit's gun launcher to bear and squeezed off a round; the DINN veered away as the 350mm buckshot round streaked into the air, spreading its self-forging anti-armour pellets everywhere. 120mm rounds erupted from the 105 Launcher Dagger's shoulder vulcan, and the DINN dropped altitude to let the spread of bullets and pellets sail over it.

The same DINN crashed to the ground as Watcher Three took the opportunity to strike from the back, the beam rifle shot burning through the lightweight aerial mobile suit, even as the Buster Dagger tore its way out of the ravaged hangar.

"Be careful of where you step," Kahora cautioned. "None of us here are as intimately familiar with the Supercomplex's layout as ZAFT or the older troops."

"Got that, Watcher Leader," Ash replied. "I'll proceed to the next location."

Triggering the thrusters on the Buster Dagger, the mobile suit leapt onto another building and took aim. Ash was about to fire when the concrete underneath the mobile suit exploded and crumbled; Ash had barely triggered the thrusters and got away in time.

"I have an ID on that," Watcher Four replied. "ZuOOT bombardment. More of them are joining in."

"You might as well call it a sniping attack," Ash grumbled, landing behind a building. More rounds began to land, and the Buster Dagger fired over the building; the beam shot arced over a ZuOOT, which simply returned the gesture with a burst of fire from its twin-barrelled arm cannon.

Kahora's 105 Launcher Dagger burst from its cover in a vertical boosted jump, and slagged the ZuOOT with a well-aimed blast from its Agni cannon. Despite the small victory, she scowled as the latest reports from the other squadrons came in. "Our air forces are being overwhelmed," she said, "same goes for our other ground forces."

"How bad?" Watcher Four asked, her mobile suit hiding behind its shield as a 500mm round struck the surface of the superhardened alloy. The Fortrestra Duel Dagger opened fire, the target GINN ducking behind a building as a trio of beam shots gouged chunks out of the surroundings.

"Razor Squadron couldn't strike hard enough. They're being pushed back by a couple of BuCUEs working in tandem with ZuOOT support." Kahora paused to fire her Dagger's 120mm vulcan cannon, the stream of fire scoring a glancing hit on a DINN's shoulder armour as it tried to initiate an airstrike. The DINN angled away, barely escaping a railgun round from Watcher Three. "Sweeper Squadron is holding their ground, but ZAFT reinforcements are heading their way as well."

Ash mentally counted the number of squadrons participating in the battle. "What about the Tridents and Black Sabres?"

"We lost contact with them as soon as they hit the water," Kahora replied. "I only hope they haven't been overwhelmed by ZAFT aquatic MS..."

**CE 71 June 25th, Victoria Supercomplex West Wing Underwater Generator Complex, Lake Victoria, Uganda-Tanzania border, South African Union**

**Night 01 23**

Trident Leader bit back the urge to curse, as his Forbidden Blue, with its backpack covering its head and upper torso in close-combat mode, clashed against a ZnO. Its twin armoured shoulder pods barely held against the blows of the clawed ZAFT mobile suit. ZAFT had deployed aquatic mobile suits into the waters of Lake Victoria, and the moment they had hit the water, the ZAFT units had set upon them from all directions.

The Forbidden Blue pushed away from the ZnO and lashed out with its trident, but the ZnO diverted the blow, and the trident hit nothing. Only a last-minute dodge let Trident Leader keep his life as the ZnO suddenly accelerated, and the mobile suit barely missed smashing into the cockpit of the Forbidden Blue to crunch its pilot alive. Unlike Gundam-type units, the Forbidden Blue lacked Phase Shift Armor; one good hit was all the ZnO needed.

Radio contact had been lost a while ago; Trident Leader couldn't tell how many Trident and Black Sabres squadron members had remained alive. The area was literally infested; Trident Leader himself had disposed of the GoOHNs that had accompanied the ZnO, and he was now locked in a battle to the death, while his allies on the surface had to contend with the entirety of the ZAFT forces stationed in this place.

The ZnO turned and approached again, this time intending to finish off the OMNI mobile suit by approaching from below; Trident Leader turned to face the threat, and as the ZnO extended its claws to force him to get defensive, he stabbed downwards with the trident weapon his mobile suit carried.

The ZnO easily batted the melee weapon aside with one massive claw and grappled the OMNI mobile suit; the Zno's twin shoulder-mounted phonon maser cannons on its shoulders lighted up as they prepared to unleash their charge. At this close range, the Forbidden Blue's Geschmeidig Panzer beam deflection system could not be used to block beam attacks. That was what Trident Leader had hoped for, however. The front of the Forbidden Blue lit up, and its own front-mounted phonon maser cannon unleashed a shot that pierced the ZnO head-on; a cloud of bubbles obscured the both of them as the electrically-charged plasma shot burned through the ZAFT mobile suit. The ZnO emerged from the bubble cloud a second later, sinking through the waters of Lake Victoria with a mangled cockpit section. Letting out a sigh of relief, Trident Leader consulted his map display and checked his unit status; his mobile suit still had the EMP charges it carried, but the hydroelectric plants were still a way away, and he wouldn't put it past ZAFT to play more surprise cards. But he had a mission. Even without the rest of the squadron, he'll disable each plant by hand if he had to. Moving the mobile suit forward, the Forbidden Blue vanished deeper into the waters of the lake.

CE 71 June 25th, OMNI Firebase Delta, Kisangani Outskirts, Democratic Republic of the Congo, South African Union

Night 02 38

Guy Leon rested in the cockpit of his Strike Dagger, letting his mind fall into the background hum of the carrier plane's massive engines. The transports of Task Force Delta were waiting on the runway; one word, and they would be in the air, throwing caution to the wind as they sped towards Victoria.

Yet, as the soldiers of Task Force Kilo battled it out, it took everything Guy had to keep himself in his seat. It was anathema to him to sit a battle out while he knew that others were bleeding and dying.

Guy's squadron commander activated the channel. "You all there?"

"Aye sir," Guy replied. "Can't rest at all."

One by one, the team members reported their status. Most of them were of like mind as Guy; Task Force Delta contained a fair number of people from the Second Battle of Victoria, and as most of Guy's comrades were survivors themselves, they were itching to pay all their dues back to ZAFT.

"Good. Strap yourself in and prepare for a combat drop," the commander replied. "They're taking off in five minutes."

"So they got the railguns offline already?" one of the team members asked.

"No idea. Probably not," the commander replied, "but we're going in anyway. We've just received news that Mission Command has just balanced in the fact that ZAFT might destroy the mass driver rather than leave it for us; naval patrols have spotted _Vosgulov_ submarines in the Seychelles, most likely readying for force extraction, and the 14th Space Fleet has just caught up to the ZAFT orbital drop fleet. Who knows that those crazy Coordinators might do."

"Wh-that's insane," a second pilot said. "The MR-6 railguns will toast us alive with anti-air rounds! Besides, where can they run after mangling the Habilis driver?"

"No…" Guy replied. "With the _Vosgulovs_, there's a good chance they can make it to Kaohsiung, or even Carpentaria. OMNI won't be able to redeploy their scattered navy in time to block them or close off the airspace around Kaohsiung's mass driver at this time. And if they do the same at Kaohsiung…" Guy let his sentence trail off, the unspoken implications sinking into the hearts of every man and woman that heard it.

"My second-in-command's right, so you better pray they hit the other planes," the commander snapped. "Now suit up, clean your necks, and I'll see you all on the other side!"

**CE 71 June 25th, Victoria Supercomplex East Wing, Lake Victoria, Uganda-Tanzania border, South African Union**

**Night 03 29**

Kahora winced as a 500mm round impacted a nearby building, the explosion sending concrete chucks bouncing off the scarred and pitted armour of her 105 Launcher Dagger. She returned fire with the mobile suit's 58mm machinegun, but the agile CGUE sped off to behind cover as the heavy rounds traced a path into an obstructing building. In the background, the MR-6 railguns were beginning to move into position; while the guns lacked the telltale signs of an electrical charge, Kahora also knew that the closer their reinforcements approached, the less power the guns needed to fire to intercept them, and as a result, they could reload faster, allowing them to put up an impressive barrage.

"Watcher Leader, this is going on forever," Watcher Three replied. "Request permission to rush the enemy formation!"

"Watcher Leader to Watcher Three, negative," Kahora replied. Barely a half-hour ago, the Watchmen had encountered a heavy-weapons enemy formation; it had taken less than half the time since for the ZAFT side to demolish most of the Watchmen's cover, and keeping them suppressed under a hail of fire. "Watcher Leader to Watcher Two, what's your status?"

Ash licked his dry lips as he continued scanning the area, his Buster Dagger hidden behind a half-collapsed structure. His missile pods were long empty, having been used to silence a CAV formation some time back; he would give plenty to have those missiles back again, if only for their explosive power. "No sight of my target whatsoever," he said. "Coward's either gone to ground, or left the zone altogether."

The stalemate had started when a CGUE with a sniper rifle had first appeared before their team; Ash had tried to take it down, but it had engaged all four of them in a running gun battle and had lured them into this area, where the formation had halted all their attempts to advance.

Watcher Four's Fortrestra Duel Dagger lay battered against a building; her unit had taken a Pardus heavy missile head-on as a CGUE DEEP Arms tied her down in close combat, the ZAFT unit leaping out of the way just in time. Unfortunately, the impact of the missile had destroyed any frontal armour her unit had, and it had been a simple matter for the CGUE DEEP Arms to charge straight in and stab the disoriented mobile suit in its torso block, before fleeing into the cover of the partially collapsed buildings.

Contact had been lost with the surviving mobile suit teams about ten minutes ago. With no way to know if the mission conditions had been fulfilled, Kahora had opted to hold the line while they tried looking for means to re-establish battlefield control.

Ash had just spotted his target; the CGUE had emerged from behind a building, and ducked as the Buster Dagger sent a beam shot straight at it. The energy blast burned a hole through its cover, but the lack of an explosion meant that nothing was hit.

"Damn," Ash said. "I knew this place would be full of veteran Coordinators, but some of these guys don't even seem to fight like humans!"

"Don't falter. As long as we can scare them into being cautio-" Kahora paused as she tried to locate the source of the increasingly-loud rumbling sounds. "What the hell is that?"

"Watcher Leader!" Watcher Three said, turning to face their rear. "The railguns! They're being re-deployed!"

Kahora bit back the urge to make a colourful curse. "This can only mean that their air or ground field radars have finally found something to shoot at." She quickly ran through her guesses, which all arrived at the same conclusion. "Looks like they're sending the aerial reinforcements ahead of time."

"They're going to die to the railguns," Ash said. "This is a suicide rush!"

"There must be something going on that we're not aware of," Kahora said. "All the more reason for us to hold here."

"We're not going to disable the railguns?" Watcher Three asked. "Task Force Delta, Lima and Kilo are going to be massacred at this rate!"

"We have no guarantee that the Luna fleet will be able to stop ZAFT's orbital reinforcements," Kahora said.

"We have no guarantee that they can't either," Ash replied. "Just one gun – just let up open a hole in their interception coverage!"

Kahora bit her lower lip in frustration. The mobile suit squadrons had been badly ravaged since the start of the battle; the Trident and Black Sabres squadrons had been silent since after landing, Sweeper Squadron had gone silent a while ago, and the Blast Guards had all been shot down in a heated dogfight. ZAFT had reclaimed the skies, and it took everything Ash could muster to keep them from descending onto the Watchmen from the top.

"Alright. You have my permission to disable Gun Three," Kahora said. From what she could pick up of Razor and Impact Squadrons' scattered radio transmissions, they were just barely holding out. "But no targeting any key components!"

"Roger that, Watcher Leader," Ash said, aiming the Buster Dagger's 94mm beam rifle at the turret base. The collapsed buildings had thankfully given a partially-cleared path to the railgun; given that the railgun was still moving into position to aim somewhere west, Ash's shot would most likely open up a path for Task Force Delta's aerial fleet to get through –

The Buster Dagger jerked forward as something blunt caught it from behind; the cover it was leaning against fragmented into concrete chunks, as the familiar high-pitched roar of heavy rounds faded into the background, followed by the roar of rocket thrusters.

The impact forced the mobile suit forward and into the ground, and the cockpit seat restrains dug into the pilot suit even as the sudden whiplash impact forced the air out of Ash's lungs. His temporarily greying vision registered a CGUE DEEP Arms, its beam cannons left with charred stumps, charging over his fallen mobile suit, arm-carried 28mm vulcan cannon roaring as it headed straight for Kahora's 105 Dagger.

The light-calibre rounds failed to inflict any lasting damage, but the next strike by the CGUE DEEP Arms from its NOL-Y941 heavy beam sword chopped the 105 Dagger's Agni hyper impulse cannon in half. Swearing, Kahora jettisoned the damaged weapon and drew her mobile suit's own beam sabre, and a lightning wave briefly erupted over both units as sabre edge met sword edge.

Even as the Buster Dagger scrambled to its feet, Ash had just brought its beam rifle to bear on the CGUE DEEP Arms when a loud beeping pulled his attention somewhere else. The Buster Dagger bent forward as a GINN's sword split the air moments where its head had been; biting back a swear, the Buster Dagger spun to face its new enemy and backpedalled to put some range between them, its 350mm gun launcher disengaging from its storage rack. "Watcher 3!" Ash yelled as he tried to put the evading GINN within the gunsights of the Buster Dagger. "Get that DEEP Arms from behi-"

"I'm sorry," Watcher Three replied, as his Fortrestra Duel Dagger grappled with another GINN, the ZAFT mobile suit forcing the OMNI unit back with a two-sword style. "I-"

The video feed for Watcher Three burst with static as the GINN struck the head of the Fortrestra Duel Dagger with one of its swords; the heavy blow took out of a good chunk of the mobile suit's head, and the mobile suit staggered backwards even as the GINN continued the assault. The heavy armour of the Fortrestra Duel Dagger had proved too much for the swords to easily cut through, but as the blinded mobile suit lost its balance and crashed into a partially-collapsed building, the GINN stabbed one of its swords through its torso, and the video feed died.

On Ash's side, the Buster Dagger let go of its gun launcher, the support arm attached to the weapon creaking in protest as it swung freely. Erratic flashes of light cast harsh shadows on the surroundings as Ash drew the mobile suit's beam sabre and barely activated it in time to meet the GINN's heavy sword.

An arm reached out and grabbed the 94mm beam rifle; the shrieking of metal filtered through the Buster Dagger's external receiver over the various noises of the battlefield, as the GINN's iron grip bent the weapon's barrel out of shape. With a turn and a flick, the GINN's sword sent the beam sabre spiralling out of the Buster Dagger's hand even as Ash discarded the useless beam rifle and drew its remaining beam sabre. The remains of the building behind the GINN shattered as Ash brought the mobile suit's gun launcher forward again, the buckshot round barely missing the ZAFT mobile suit that had dived out of the way, a massive dust cloud rising up where its powerful leg thrusters fired.

"Stay still, dammit!" Ash said, backing away towards Kahora's unit, which was trading a series of blows with the CGUE DEEP Arms. The ZAFT unit was missing both its shoulder beam cannons and shield, and was covered with plasma scarring over its armour, but it held fast against the 105 Dagger, which had its shoulder vulcan destroyed and was armed with nothing else other than its beam sabres and CIWS guns. "Watcher Leader! We need to head straight for Gun Three!"

Both OMNI mobile suits stood back-to-back as the remaining ZAFT units circled them like sharks looking for prey. Ash saw the CGUE DEEP Arms ready its beam sword. "Dammit," Ash hissed, "There's no end to this!"

"Don't falter," Kahora replied. "If we run, they're going to hit us from behind-"

The three ZAFT units charged, and Ash made ready to intercept the GINN coming straight at him by charging straight in. The GINN stabbed forward, with the lighter Buster Dagger sidestepping the blow; its brought its beam sabre in from below, but the GINN grabbed the OMNI mobile suit's wrist and violently slammed it against its knee block armour, crushing the Buster Dagger's hand unit.

On Kahora's side, the 105 Dagger rushed the CGUE DEEP Arms head-on and slammed shoulder-first into the ZAFT unit, the enemy's beam sword sawing a shallow gash into the 105 Dagger's left shoulder armour before Kahora shoved upwards with the 105 Dagger's shoulder blow, the impact knocking the weapon out of the DEEP Arms' hands. A second slash from the right literally disarmed the ZAFT unit as it attempted to backpedal, and the 105 Dagger kicked the disabled machine out of its way as the third GINN swept in from the side with a sword blow.

The 105 Dagger caught the blow in its midriff, the impact crushing metal and armour all the way up to its cockpit block. Ash heard Kahora yell in pain even as he faced down his own threat; taking a sword blow to the Buster Dagger's right shoulder, he slammed the barrel of his mobile suit's gun launcher into the side of the GINN and fired, the self-forging fragmentation pellets perforated the composite armour of its lower torso. Before he could turn to assist Kahora, however, his Buster Dagger suddenly buckled as an anti-armour round penetrated the mobile suit's lower back from behind, mangled its main drive system, and sent it crashing to the ground for the last time, unable to move or fight any longer.

"Dammit!" Ash said, frantically working the controls. In the heat of battle, he'd completely forgotten his real enemy; the sniper-equipped CGUE, the one opponent he was tasked to bring down, the one opponent that allowed other forces to overrun the Watchmen's position. "Kahora!"

A few meters away, the 105 Dagger leaned against an inert GINN, its beam sabre set against a smoking gash leading into the ZAFT mobile suit's torso. "Got… him…." Kahora said, gasping for air between words. "And the… gun… ten minutes ago…"

Ash paused in his desperate attempt to re-engage his Buster Dagger and looked at Gun Three; its lights were darkened, and the barrel was angled at forty-five degrees and aiming south-west, a direction without incoming OMNI troops. "Its… not moving." Ash stared harder, as though the gun might be adjusting itself with minute movements. As Ash glanced around, he noted that none of the guns were firing or even moving.

"They… made it…" Kahora wheezed.

The CGUE that had downed Ash stepped out of the shadows, its mono-eye glaring through the darkness. The fires that burned around the battlefield cast flickering shadows on the ZAFT unit as it discarded its smoking sniper rifle and drew its heavy sword, advancing on the motionless 105 Dagger.

"No… no!" Ash screamed. "Get the hell away from her!"

The CGUE paused and hesitated for a moment, before the brilliant light of its thrusters trailed into the night sky as it boosted away from where it stood. The ground it stood on exploded a moment later as a Forbidden Blue stepped out of the surrounding ruins, its Armfauer 115mm arm-mounted cannons firing. "This is Trident Leader!" The Forbidden Blue continued firing at the retreating CGUE. "If you can still move, get Watcher Leader out of there!"

"I'm stuck hatch-down!" Ash replied. "Get her out of there! Please!"

Trident Leader gritted his teeth. "Razor Three! Extract Watcher Leader and Watcher Two!"

A Duel Dagger hiding behind the ruins emerged, and begun prying open the 105 Dagger's cockpit block. "This might take a while, Trident Leader…"

"Make it quick!" The Forbidden Blue continued firing, the cannons gouging chunks out of the concrete.

Before Trident Leader could cover Razor Three's left side, a LaGOWE charged into the fray and slammed into the Duel Dagger, throwing it onto the ground; Trident Leader turned to meet this new threat, only for a hail of fire to slam into the back of the Forbidden Blue, throwing it forward. A GINN OCHRE landed from a boosted jump, slamming a sword into the back of the Forbidden Blue even as the LaGOWE batted a beam sabre out of the struggling Duel Dagger's hand, before jumping back and gutting the fallen unit with well-placed beam shots.

Ash felt his heart plummet. They may have scored a victory, but their reinforcements would never arrive in time. He wanted to live; he wanted to see the end of this war side by side with-

The LaGOWE suddenly threw itself into reverse, folding its legs into tread mode and reversing back into the tangled cover that the surrounding collapsed buildings provided. The GINN stepped back and attempted to flee into cover, but a beam shot lanced out from the sky and cut through its leg. The mobile suit collapsed forward even as a second shot burned a hole through its torso.

Ash watched in amazement as mobile suits appeared from the night sky. "This is Delta Leader to all forces. Respond if you're still alive. I repeat, this is Delta Leader to all forces…"

"Watcher Two here," Ash replied. "I have men down at my location; they require immediate attention. Can you send forces over?"

"Delta Leader, I read you. The Howling Spears Squadron will shortly arrive at your location to assist. You've done well. Now leave the rest to us."

Ash sat back in his cockpit as OMNI forces landed all over the Supercomplex. In the distance, anti-air fire flashed upwards into the night sky, but the scattered explosions meant that ZAFT was failing to keep reinforcements from landing. Six Strike Daggers in digital desert camouflage u landed where he had last fought; one of them came over to flip his Buster Dagger over.

"This is Howl Leader," the Strike Dagger prised the Buster Dagger's cockpit open. "Task Force Delta's first wave has already landed; the second wave is coming up soon along with Task Force Lima and Kilo's first reinforcements. You guys have our thanks for daring to strike straight into the heart of the enemy."

Ash mumbled his thanks and clambered out of the cockpit, racing for the 105 Dagger the moment his feet hit solid ground. An air-dropped APC landed nearby; Ash saw soldiers filing out, a combat medic amongst them. A Strike Dagger had already broken the cockpit seal of the 105 Dagger, and Kahora was pulled out by some of the soldiers; Ash came to a stop as he set his eyes on the bloodied body being tended to by the medic, and his voice caught in his throat as he saw her eyes slowly focus on his. Kahora made a faint smile through the blood encrusting her lips.

"It's okay," one of the soldiers who had pulled her out replied, as Ash knelt on the ground, his legs weak with relief. "She's still alive."

**CE 71 June 28th, Victoria Supercomplex East Wing Medical Complex, Lake Victoria, Tanzania, South African Union**

**Morning 08 23**

Kahora Zashe slowly limped to the window, opened it, and set her bandaged hands on the cool windowsills, letting the last vestiges of the morning air flow in. From her view, the Victoria Supercomplex was a battered but victorious symbol of the Eurasian Federation. Tall pillars of smoke rose into the air where particularly intense battles had taken place, but the base was still largely intact, and the remaining Eurasian Federation personnel busied themselves on the ground repairing the area.

The decision by Task Force Delta to take to the skies had been a gamble that had paid off. The MR-6 railguns had depended on reliable firing data during the first battle of Victoria to achieve the long-range killing power they had become famous for; ZAFT had not only neglected this point, but also destroyed several stationary observation towers during their haste to secure the Supercomplex during the second battle, further shortening the attack range of the railguns to a pitiful five-hundred kilometre range.

Combined with their thinly-stretched manpower, the base's facilities were barely able to destroy even a twentieth of Task Force Delta's reinforcements, and the timely disabling of the power stations by the Tridents and Black Sabres had prevented the railguns from blowing the aerial reinforcements out of the sky.

Despite reinforcements from all three task forces, this did not mean that the Third Battle of Victoria had been an easy victory. The ZAFT forces had been tenacious, with the fighting lasting well into the afternoon of the 25th of June; had the Luna fleet not managed to intercept in time and fight to a draw with the ZAFT fleet, Task Force Delta and Lima might have found themselves facing a second battle right after regaining ownership of the Victoria Supercomplex. Survivors had fled towards the Seychelles as OMNI had suspected, but those were left to the remainder of Task Force Lima to handle.

The sound of footsteps reached her ears, and she turned in time to see Ash walk in. "You shouldn't be up this quickly, Major," he said. "Skeletal and skin injuries take longer to heal the more you move around."

"I'm a patient, not an invalid," Kahora replied, annoyance lacing the edges of her voice. "These wounds will heal fast enough." She moved herself back to bed, trying to keep a poker face despite the slight lances of pain that shot up her legs and spine whenever she walked. "In fact, I'm more amazed that all of the Watchmen made it out alive without losing a limb... although, with you excluded, I seem to be one of the luckier ones in terms of severity of injuries."

"I am as well," Ash said. He looked around the ward; Kahora had been given a single-patient ward thanks to her rank and her previous mission. Many others were not so lucky; the Spearheads that had escorted them, the Blast Guard, Sweeper, and Razor Squadrons had all taken near-complete casualties, and even now search teams were still sweeping the bottom of Lake Victoria for the bodies of fallen Trident and Black Sabres squadron members.

Infantry and auxiliary armour losses had not been light either; the cavernous hangars of the Supercomplex meant that infantrymen infiltrating the area ran the risk of running into armoured vehicle support that they were ill-equipped to take head-on. Reports had even come in that the infantry had barely made it to the control room before ZAFT saboteurs could rig the Habilis Mass Driver to self-destruct.

And all that was not counting the losses taken by the mobile suit and armour reinforcements when they had clashed with the desperate ZAFT defenders.

"Well, at least we have the mass driver," Kahora said. "Now our situation isn't as desperate as before. I imagine the Atlantic Federation top brass back home won't like its location thought."

"With Panama gone, I don't think they get to choose here," Ash replied. "We have the armies but no way to get them where they need to be, while the Eurasian Federation has the means to get the troops where they need to be, but no troops to spare. It's a good thing we're allies…"

Kahora frowned for a second, but Ash missed the thousand-implication expression of his superior as his mind wandered to the box in his pocket. That was his real objective; after this mission, he was sure waiting any longer would be foolhardy. Now all he needed to do was to turn her attention away from the state of this messy world, and focus on the individual…

_Afterword: _

_This battle focuses on the Third Battle of Victoria, the same place that housed a mass driver and was the location of two previous battles. I've always felt that this victory lent a lot to the Alliance's eventually push to space, since it gave them a free mass driver just days after the destruction of Panama's. Since now I've had time to plan out and balance the fights for both sides, I might be reworking some of the older stories as well…_

_EDIT: I think the number and range of those railguns still need balancing…Still, I wouldn't have it any other way. _


	16. Chapter 16: Full Circle

_Author's Note:_

_This fanfic is to write upon some of the events in Gundam SEED and SEED Destiny that are not touched upon or mentioned in-series, but their dates are listed on GundamWikia and are thus treated as part of canon. They are therefore based upon actual happenings in the Cosmic Era universe, but the events within them are open to interpretation. This fanfic is also an attempt at showcasing a "what-if" of all sides involved in the wars, and how some of the events within the show might have come to be._

**Gundam SEED: Tales of the Cosmic Era**

**Chapter 15: Full Circle**

**CE 71 July 24th, Supercarrier **_Arc of Justice_**, Battlegroup _Astra_, Casablanca Sea, 580 kilometres offshore Morocco, African Community**

**Morning 06 34**

The carrier deck was rolling, the massive warship tilting left and right in the stormy waters off the coast of Morocco. Howling winds and stinging rain lashed the sailors on deck, as well as the numerous F-7D Spearhead VTOL fighters secured onto the deck of the supercarrier _Arc of Justice_. If one looked hard enough into the distance, one could also see, through the gloom, the laden decks of the numerous _Spengler_-class assault ships, their top decks crammed with Spearheads and attack helicopters. The former light carriers found use as assault ships, with their armoured bows allowing them to breach lines and slam straight into a coastal base…

…Where the deadly complement of mobile suits they carried within their secondary hangars could be deployed into the heat of battle. Combined with well-armed Dagger variants piloted by veterans, this relatively new tactic, one that was birthed in the lull period between the titanic Third Battle of Victoria and the current operation now, had proved to be an effective one in forcing ZAFT to pull back from their forward bases towards Gibraltar and Carpentaria.

After grabbing ships from all over the Atlantic and Pacific naval zones, the forces of OMNI were now ready to bring forth the final hammer-blow to drive ZAFT out from their Gibraltar Base. Spread out in a circle formation around this collection of carrier and assault vessels were numerous _Des Monies/Arkansas_–class cruisers and _Fraser_-class destroyers, forming a formidable anti-air and detection net, while supply and logistic vessels trailed several dozen of kilometres behind the fleet.

At fifty-nine ships, this was all OMNI could spare for a straight assault on ZAFT; the debacle at JOSH-A had drained the Eurasian Federation's fleet, which had contributed nearly 60% of the OMNI Naval Force's total ship count. With vessels pulled from as far as the State of Japan from the Republic of East Asia to make the numbers, this was an operation that OMNI could not fail if they were to relieve the European front of the pressure of ZAFT.

Gibraltar Base was ZAFT's largest military complex in the region. Capable of supporting over a dozen incoming and outgoing shuttle flights at once within the span of three hours, it supported all ZAFT troops in the European, Middle Eastern and Northern African regions, and was always under guard by no less than three battalions of mobile suits; and that was not taking into account auxiliary forces. The base was ZAFT's last lifeline into space, and to lose it would mean freeing up the European region's manpower, which had constantly kept up the pressure against ZAFT for a year and a half straight. If the Europeans were given time to lick their wounds, more troops would be contributed to the front, which would undoubtedly end up in space.

ZAFT was at its end, and it knew it. That was why Lieutenant Astor Fenzikel, looking from the flight deck at the violent waves of the Casablanca Sea, felt no surprise when early warning systems, seeded from orbit a week ago, had detected a ZAFT fleet of nearly fifty _Vosgulov_-class submarines arranging themselves in formation, ready to take on the battlegroup.

Air combat had been the least unbalanced point of the entire Bloody Valentine war. ZAFT DINNs were infamous for their manoeuvre capabilities and their Infestus strike fighters compensated for the mobile suits' shorter range and lower top speed, but neither possessed such as overwhelming advantage like ground- and space-based mobile suits that allowed them to run amok over their OMNI counterparts. For the OMNI Air Force, the Spearhead was still their reliable sword of the skies, a decent multirole fighter.

Of course, Spearheads performed poorly when forced on the defensive, but then JOSH-A had been a lost cause from the start. Mobile suits were designed to take the fight to the enemy in unassailable terrain; Astor had been watching the battle with his squadron mates in the briefing room as they were en-route from South America to reinforce the base, and the moment the mobile suits were allowed to launch so close to the shores of Alaska was the moment OMNI lost air superiority in the region. It was a point that Astor remembered well; as far as advantages go, the skies were still fair play for both armies throughout most of the war, as long as OMNI seized the initiative in such battles and kept the mobile suits at range.

This Second Battle of the Casablanca Sea would not be like any of the battles from before, however. Astor spared one last look at the crashing waves before boarding his fighter, getting into the aircraft and starting up its engines.

The sharks of OMNI would be prowling the seas today.

**CE 71 July 24th, _Spengler_-class Assault Ship **_Iwo Jima_**, Battlegroup _Astra_, Casablanca Sea, 560 kilometres offshore Morocco, African Community**

**Morning 06 52**

The outside was a cacophony of rain and howling wind, but the interior of the _Spengler_-class assault ship _Iwo Jima_ was even noisier as the crew prepared the mobile suits housed within its front hangar bay for launch. Of the ten assault ships surrounding the _Arc of Justice_, six carried amphibious mobile suits, and they would serve as the tip of the spear against ZAFT's naval MS forces.

Captain Annette Selveta, commander of the 33rd Naval Armor Tactics Squadron _Tridents,_ of the 3rd Atlantic Forces Division, glanced at her squadron members, each of them getting into their GAT-706S Deep Forbidden aquatic mobile suits. A relatively new addition to the OMNI arsenal, the Deep Forbidden was based off her own mobile suit, the limited-production GAT-X225 Forbidden Blue, which was in turn a prototype variant based off the Forbidden GUNDAM, a second-generation OMNI mobile suit. Adapted for aquatic use, the Deep Forbidden was the mass-production version of her own Forbidden Blue, and eight of them alongside her Forbidden Blue formed the _Trident_ Squadron.

The squadron had served in many battles running raiding operations along the African coastline, before arriving at the Casablanca Sea; their daring drop operation into Lake Victoria at the Third Battle of Victoria was their trial under fire, with the squadron losing so many members that all had yet to be replaced; Annette herself had been promoted twice to her current position, and she had been one of three members remaining from the original squadron that had fought in Lake Victoria.

Annette remembered receiving the news of her parents' deaths during the invasion of Morocco one year ago, back when she was about to graduate from officer cadet school. It had been a great blow to her, for her decision to join the military was partially the need to become the breadwinner for the family. It was an ironic twist of fate that she was now free of a great deal of financial difficulty, in exchange for being the last of her family to remain on this planet.

Climbing into the cold cockpit of the Forbidden Blue, Annette sealed the hatch and initiated the start-up sequence. A low, deep humming sound filled the cockpit as the mobile suit's power plant started up; screens flashed to life, the computer initiating the mobile suit's GUNDAM OS and setting all weapons and propulsion systems to standby. Moments later, the Forbidden Blue's data-link activated and synchronized itself to the battlegroup's shared tactical data, uploading maps, weather conditions and planned manoeuvres into the mobile suit's database.

The Forbidden Blue's eyes glowed a brilliant yellow as Annette ran a check on the mobile suit's systems. As massive machines of war, mobile suits provided unrivalled tactical flexibility, but in exchange the logistics required to ensure their continued operation were likewise large. Annette was lucky that she managed to secure her squadron's standing with the command staff; without the _Tridents'_ reputation, it would be impossible to ask for regular resupply and repairs.

The Forbidden Blue rotated its head on its neck joint, the combined artificial muscle cable and hydraulics systems protected underneath a treated rubber cover. For aquatic mobile suits, maintenance was even more important that their land-based counterparts, as being dunked in seawater for every sortie made for cleaning nightmares. In that aspect, ZAFT's GOOhNs and ZnOs proved superior; their design reduced the number of exposed parts, although they paid for it in a lack of amphibious and close-combat capability.

A wall hatch slid open, the weapons rack within bringing forth a three-headed spear. The Forbidden Blue reached out and grabbed the trident, and around her, the Deep Forbiddens of the _Tridents_ equipped their weapons as well. Gears shifted, and a howling permeated the interior of the _Iwo Jima's_ front hangar bay as its four side doors opened, and Annette caught a glimpse of the aquatic mobile suits on the other assault ships. Their IFFs lighted up the display, including a squadron of Aile 105 Daggers.

Annette activated the shared channel of the squadron. "Trident Leader to all, report status."

"Trident Two to Trident Leader," the reply came. Lieutenant Hoski Roude, her second-in-command, was also a fellow survivor of Victoria, and both of them had seen members come and go. When Annette had been appointed to the position, she had immediately recommended Hoski for the promotion to Lieutenant. "Team Two is ready."

Most MS squadrons could choose to split their forces into three teams of four, but Annett had chosen to have an oversized team of five led by Hoski, with herself leading the remaining three. Having one team less than most squadrons meant that covering a wider area would be difficult, but Annette was unwilling to make it any easier for ZAFT to pick off her pilots.

"Trident Seven to Leader," Lieutenant Yorui Matsuda's voice sounded out. The last survivor of Victoria, she had been a rookie during the Third Battle of Victoria, but her skills with the Deep Forbidden's trident had been nothing short of miraculous. "Team One all checks out. On your call, Leader."

The view on the Forbidden Blue's cockpit screens slowly changed, from the harsh lighting of the _Iwo Jima's_ interior to the rain-drenched blurry grey of the sky above the Casablanca Sea, as the assault ship's side catapults transported the mobile suits to the very edge of its launch platforms. A massive wave crashed into the bow of the _Iwo Jima_, the backwash of water washing over the ship, the Forbidden Blue, and the Deep Forbiddens.

"Lord," Trident Five muttered. "Looks like the inside of a washing machine out there."

"Don't be an idiot, Five, it hardly matters when you're nearly a kilometre underwater," Hoski said. "Stay frosty."

Annette let out a long, slow breath. She had sortied with this Forbbiden Blue numerous times since, and the mobile suit had an even longer history than her; it had been the machine of the _Tridents' _original leader.

It was also the flaw of the Forbidden Blue that had killed him; unlike the Deep Forbidden, the Forbidden Blue's anti-pressure systems tapped into the mobile suit's Geschmeidig Panzer system to prevent deep-sea pressure from crushing it. Two sorties back, the Forbidden Blue had been scraped by an enemy torpedo hit; the impact knocked out both the Geschmeidig Panzer system and dented the torso block, and before anyone could react, the massive pressure had crushed the cockpit block and twisted the mobile suit out of proportion.

Repairing it was easy enough, compared to the void left in the hearts of the squadron member; their leader had been a well-liked commander. Annette only hoped that she was doing a good enough job to replace him. "Tridents!" She said, as her Forbidden Blue stepped off from the launch catapult into the roiling waters. "Launch!"

**CE 71 July 24th, Supercarrier **_Arc of Justice_**,Battlegroup _Astra_, Casablanca Sea, 550 kilometres offshore Morocco, African Community**

**Morning 07 09**

"This is Astra Prime to Katar Six, all checks on my side are green as well. You're cleared for launch," the operator replied. "Good hunting."

"Katar Six to Astra Prime, roger," Astor replied. The background whining of the F-7D's engines increased to a loud roar that overpowered even the incessant beat of raindrops on the fighter's canopy. To the people outside, the fighter's nose lowered slightly, as though it was straining against the catapult that held it in place. The air behind the fighter's thrusters blurred, as the fighter manoeuvred itself onto the launch catapult.

All F-7D fighters were built as twin-seaters, but were seldom used as such unless their role demanded it. A single pilot was enough, and weapons control could be slaved to the pilot's console; for fleet battles, such a configuration would be the best to spread manpower around. Units everywhere were understaffed, and the deployment of mobile suits didn't exempt fighter craft from the aerial frontlines, no matter how unmatched they were against ZAFT. It was better to have one person die in the stead of two.

"Katar Six, taking her up," Astor said, pushing the engines of the Spearhead further. While it was a VTOL aircraft, it was a waste of fuel to force a fully-loaded fighter to take off vertically, and in such weather conditions it was far easier to launch them with a catapult from behind a screen of warships.

The fighter suddenly lurched forward as the ships' catapult pulled the aircraft along; three seconds later, Astor's Spearhead was flung into the air, and he gently eased the joystick several times to stabilize the aircraft. Letting his training take over, Astor angled the fighter skywards, moving to join the rest of _Katar_ Squadron in the air. The landing gear retracted itself, and the Spearhead shook momentarily as its software failsafes disengaged, pushing the fighter to cruising speed. The sound of heavy rain hitting the aircraft's canopy receded into the background as Astor put his full concentration into keeping his fighter steady.

Spearhead fighters cut through the skies as Astor's Spearhead continued its climb. Slotting his craft behind Katar 1, Astor activated his commns, setting priority to the squadron channel. "Katar Six to Katar Leader, ready for action, running stats check now. Katar Six to Katar Flight Two, report."

"Katar Three here," the first reply came. "All green."

"Katar Four here," a cool voice sounded out. The Spearhead to Astor's rear and left did a full aileron roll. "I'm itching for some action here."

"Katar Five here," the last reply came. "Ready."

"Katar Six to Four, keep your pants on," Astor replied with a half-mocking tone. "Leave it flapping out, a DINN's gonna snag it and pull you into the drink."

Good. Everyone was ready. Astor hoped he was the same inside. "Katar Six to Katar Leader, Flight Two is ready."

"Katar Leader to all, Katar Squadron is ready to go. Get ready for heavy action; we're taking the fighters straight into the side of ZAFT's aerial formation. They've got DINNs mixed with Infestus and automated Guul subflight lifters acting as fleet defence; stray too close or go too slow, and they'll pick you off." Katar Leader paused for a while. "The Infestus are not much of a threat, and the DINNs will find it harder to manoeuvre in this shit weather. We'll have our hands full trying not to get blown out of control, but we're lighter. Make them come into our range, and try not to get into theirs. Katar Leader out."

"You heard the head," Katar Six said on the flight channel. Three, Five, you're an element. Four, you're with me.

"Roger," Katar Five replied. "Thatch weave, front?"

"Thatch, front," Katar Three confirmed. "Leave your back to me."

Behind Astor, Katar Four fell into formation, the second Spearhead hanging thirty meters behind and slightly to the right. "I got your ass, Katar Six, let's pound the fuckin' patchworkers."

Despite the dreary weather, Astor couldn't help but laugh at Katar Four's over-enthusiasm. "Right, we'll take the straight path in. Five, you're free to wander, but keep your path in a formation around the flight. Take any targets you see fit."

"Katar Five to Six, roger."

An alarm sounded out as the fighters entered the combat zone, the warships of the battlegroup passing by underneath them. The Spearheads quickly separated into two formations, one accelerating forward, while the second hung back as a second fighter wave; Katar squadron was amongst the second.

"Katar Leader to all, we're now in the combat zone. One of the _Arkansas_-class cruisers is around providing forward seaborne detection, although it's not much." Contacts on Astor's screen winked into existence as the targeting computer accepted the various allied datalinks to augment its own radar capabilities. "Two flights of DINNs escorted by three squadrons of Infestus are our primary targets. We'll let the other squadrons charge in and get them tangled, and we'll smash this formation from the si-"

A new batch of targets appeared on the edge of the Spearhead's display screen. "Wait, new intel coming in." Four DINNs and twelve Infestus quickly realigned themselves and made straight for the second Spearhead formation, which included Katar Squadron. "Enemy flanking flight, off portside. Well, this spoils a lot of plans."

"Katar Six to Leader," Astor said. "Request permission to engage in delaying action."

"Leader to Six, permission denied," Katar Leader said. "Leave it to-"

A third alarm sounded out, this time with the targets materializing out of the air a mere forty kilometres off the portside of the formation. "A full squadron of DINNs and an air group of Infestus at forty klicks out, probably NOE flight up to that point and got forced upwards by forward fleet elements." Katar Nine said. "I'm detecting Guul flyers in their formation hanging back, probably carrying SP weapons."

"Change of plans, Katars," Katar Leader replied. "We're intercepting the second group. All weapons free, I repeat, all weapons free." Katar Leader's Spearhead turned and angled straight for the second group of ZAFT reinforcements, with the Spearheads of other squadrons joining in. "Plug the bastards. Leader out."

"Alright boys, you heard the head," Astor replied. "Five, Three, get your arrows out. Four, your chance to shine. I'm heading straight in, so you better not mess that up."

"Aye Six, got it," Katar Four replied.

The Spearheads scattered as the distance between them and the four DINNS and twelve Infestus lessened. "Katar Ten to all Spearheads, hard enemy radar spike!"

A siren sounded out. "Spike ID on Six," Astor replied on the squadron channel. "I repeat, Spike ID on Six! Diving, diving diving!"

Astor's Spearhead flipped belly-up and angled its nose downwards, the lightweight fighter shooting towards the ocean surface as Astor increased the speed. Chasing, a DINN angled downwards towards a lone target, and 76mm shells slashed through the wet air and rain as Astor put his fighter through a Kulbit roll to avoid the sudden burst. Bursts of fire decorated the skies above as the battle was joined, and Astor's fighter buckled, its engines roaring as it fought with the winds to put it where its pilot wanted to go.

"Five to Six, I'm tied up with the Infestus fighters trailing the DINN!"

"No worries, I got him," Four replied, slotting his fighting directly behind the DINN. The mobile suit immediately pulled out of the chase, and Astor slammed the VTOL controls; the Spearhead bled speed as its thrusters re-oriented to fire downwards, and the impact pushed Astor into his seat; the corners of his vision started to blur and turn black, and the almost-deafening rumbling died down to a droning sound.

Drilled into him from countless training and live missions, Astor angled the fighter skywards and re-aligned the VTOL controls to normal flight mode. The Spearhead began climbing almost immediately, and Astor craned his neck to check the DINN's location as his senses returned.

"This is Five, I got the Infestus, coming over to the DINN."

The DINN kicked its legs out front and slowed down, letting Four pull ahead in the Spearhead. With a target in front, the DINN accelerated again, causing Four to swear and immediately began jinking his fighter left and right. 76mm rounds flew perilously close to the fighter; the DINN brought out its shotgun and pumped a flurry of shots into the air, the airburst rounds throwing flak all around.

Astor armed his Spearhead's AIM-318D Sledgehammer AAM and let the missile fly almost the next second, barely sparing time for the radar to achieve a lock. The nimble weapon punched through the gale-force rain and winds and headed straight for the DINN, which started climbing and throwing flares; bending its torso, the DINN fired downwards and behind as the missile veered off-course and went for one of the flares. Astor turned the fighter away as the rounds struck through the air where he had been moments earlier.

The DINN exploded as a second Sledgehammer slammed into its unprotected top from perpendicular, and Astor poured bursts of 20mm shells from the Spearhead's guns into the flaming wreck. Katar Four had doubled back, using the distraction afforded by Astor and the DINN's superior manoeuvrability to let the mobile suit fly ahead before turning his Spearhead into position and releasing a missile.

"Eat that, you lab-bred shitheads," Katar Four crowed as the fighters of Second Flight rearranged themselves. The DINN exploded seconds later, spraying large fragments over the grey skies. "Talk about newbie manoeuvres."

"You weren't that hot when the DINN was on your rear," Katar Three replied.

"Stow it, hanky-pank, or-" Katar Four began, but a shrill alarm cut him off almost immediately. "Shit – Hard enemy radar spike!"

"We're vectoring in, people," Astor replied, turning his Spearhead back into the fray. "Do fly-by shots if you can, but don't try any close-combat stunts. Can't rely on the DINN pilots being all rookies."

"Five, roger."

"Three, roger."

"Four, roger and ready to rock!"

Astor pushed the Spearhead into a steep diagonal turn and dive. According to his tactical display, eight fighters had already been shot down in the time it took for Flight Two to splash a DINN; he hoped that things wouldn't get anymore worse than that.

**CE 71 July 24th, 10 kilometres from Battlegroup _Astra_ First Combat Line, Casablanca Sea, 515 kilometres offshore Morocco, African Community**

**Morning 07 33**

Despite the heated air battles above the Casablanca Sea, and the equally fierce naval combat taking place on the ocean surface, Annette's world was largely silent.

Under the waves of the Casablanca Sea, the _Tridents_ and other aquatic MS that formed the battlegroup's only defence against ZAFT's naval MSes danced a ballet of death around their opponents, and the waters were thick with the shattered hulls of GOOhNs, ZnO, and a few Deep Forbidden mobile suits. There were even remnants of fallen aircraft and sinking ships; each of which presented a navigational hazard, impromptu cover, or both.

The GOOhNs lacked the close-combat ability that allowed the Forbidden Blue and Deep Forbiddens to walk all over them, and thus did their best to stay at range, unleashing waves of torpedoes to harass the OMNI mobile suits. Close combat was left to the ZnOs in the fleet's defence forces, which were unfortunately usually piloted by veterans.

Annette therefore gave thanks that most ZAFT pilots, veteran or not, were unaware of how to face an MS in underwater combat; they'd never had to sink anything smaller than a corvette for most of their service on Earth. In contrast, the doctrine that Annette and her men had trained under emphasized on interception and close-combat against ZAFT naval MS.

"Trident Three to Trident Leader," a static-filled channel crackled to life. "I'm vectoring over to intercept."

"Negative, Three," Annette replied. A plume of bubbles momentarily shrouded her Forbidden Blue as she accelerated, putting distance between her and the ZnO currently chasing her, weaving through the mauled remains of a _Fraser_-class destroyer's midsection. Seeker torpedoes streamed through the water, some smashing against suspended debris as she turned her mobile suit to face the enemy. The Forbidden Blue put both of its auxiliary claws in front, the super-hardened limbs taking a few blasts without any visible damage. "Stay your course."

With the Forbidden Blue's massive backpack deployed over its head to give it the appearance of a vaguely crablike monster wielding a trident, Annette pushed the mobile suit to the limit and quickly closed the distance between her former pursuer, dancing the deep blue mobile suit around the crowded waters. Lashing out with the trident weapon, the Forbidden Blue sheared off the ZnO's left arm in a single thrust before the ZAFT pilot could react.

The ZnO quickly fell back and attempted to dart for the wreckage of the destroyer, its remaining arm sending multiple phonon maser shots at the Forbidden Blue. The mobile suit's Geschmeidig Panzer system deflected the beams to the sides, centimetres away from the OMNI mobile suit, and Annette unleashed her Forbidden Blue's own front-mounted phonon maser cannon without even shifting position.

The shot bored through the ZAFT MS and opened another hole in the destroyer wreckage behind, and Annette let both sink into the murky depths as she turned and gave chase to her next target; a pair of GOOhNs harassing a Deep Forbidden, no doubt chasing it towards a ZnO waiting. With the battles taking place underwater and the chaos above, both the radar and sonar were cluttered to hell; add in battlefield jamming, and Annette had long since ceased trying to wring meaningful data out of the Forbidden Blue's long-ranged sensors. Even allied data links could only do so much, and as it always were with second-hand information it ran the risk of being a few seconds late.

In mobile suit combat, a few seconds could mean the difference between life and death.

"This is Trident Leader to Four," Annette said. "Prepare for hard counter."

Annette charged in from the left and below, impaling one of the GOOhNs on the Forbidden Blue's trident; its auxiliary arms reached out, and the pair of large claws that folded out grabbed onto the dying ZAFT MS and ripped it off the pole weapon, holding out the MS like a hostage shield.

The remaining GOOhN turned to fire at Annette, but the Deep Forbidden had turned to engage it, and the GOOhN tried to get a clear shot at Annette before turning back to face the Deep Forbidden. The seconds it took for that action, however, was a heavy price; the Deep Forbidden smashed both of its auxiliary arms into the GOOhN, denting its front, before unleashing a phonon maser blast that temporarily filled the area with a greenish-white flare; the ZAFT pilot didn't even had the time to put up a counterattack. On Annette's side, the Forbidden Blue let go of the metal corpse of the GOOhN and let it sink, gouges in the armour showing where the auxiliary arms' claws had dug into the machine.

"Trident Four to Leader, I'm reading an incoming signal," the voice was silent for a moment. "It's fast! Nothing like a GOOhN!"

"I'm guessing we sprang the trap all the same," Annette wryly replied, even as the shadowed silhouette of a cruising ZnO materialized from the inky darkness.

The Deep Forbidden moved to intercept, but the ZnO lashed out with an arm and sent the mobile suit turning head-over-heels in the water. Trident Four swore as he moved the mobile suit out of the firing lines of more GOOhNs coming from behind the ZnO. "Man, I can't believe I nearly got chased into _that_!"

_They were probably hoping to get me_, Annette thought, keeping it to herself. "Four, hold your ground. Don't overextend yourself; go on the defensive and keep them at range."

"Fo - , roger," the channel hissed and sputtered as the distance between the mobile suits increased.

Arms swinging, the ZnO struck out at the Forbidden Blue; Annette set the auxiliary arms in front, letting the hardened fronts take the majority of the blows before slipping a trident blow out from underneath her defences. Avoiding the attack, the ZnO moved backwards and took off as Annette fired torpedoes after the ZAFT MS.

Out of the darkness came Yorui Matsuda's Deep Forbidden; the ZnO turned to face the mobile suit and brought one of its claws forward in a sweeping strike, while the other fired off phonon maser blasts. Yorui avoided them all and closed the distance in the blink of an eye; manoeuvring the Deep Forbidden under the outstretched arm, the OMNI MS cut it off with a sudden sweeping strike from its trident, and moved in a circle around the ZnO to prevent it from getting a target lock. Yorui drew the mobile suit's arm back, and prepared to charge.

Annette rushed in from the back at the same time that Yorui did from the front. The ZnO turned and sent phonon maser blasts towards the Forbidden Blue; the blasts washed over Annette's Deep Forbidden as the mobile suit's Geschmeidig Panzer system repelled the energy shots, and the ZnO shuddered and went silent as its frame buckled under the impact of two tridents. Pulling away, Yorui's Deep Forbidden fired off a phonon maser blast, the shot blasting the ZnO into two as it sank into the depths of the ocean. "Seven to Leader, sorry for the delay. It's a tight schedule trying to keep the ZAFT MS from breaking through this wide area."

The Deep Forbidden fell into formation beside the Forbidden Blue as Hoski led his team back, the Deep Forbbidens chasing after fleeing GOOhNs. "Trident Two to Leader, we were vectored away to hunt a forward element of _Vosgulov_-class submarines. I apologize for any delays to the line advance."

"None needed, Two," Annette replied. "Anything on your end, Seven?"

"Silent," Yorui replied. "So far we're holding the line well."

Annette was silent as the squadron continued to move forward. "We'll follow the plan. Trident Five, Seven, Nine, you're with me. We're going to strike at the port flank of ZAFT' fleet formation. Trident Two, take the rest of your team and do some damage to their front."

"Acknowledged," the replies came. White wake trails of bubbles naked through the waters as the mobile suits of the _Tridents_ went to their tasks.

It wasn't even two minutes before the silhouette of the first _Vosgulov_-class submarine came into view. "Got one," Yorui said. "Beginning attack run."

Despite the eight GOOhNs swarming around the ship, Yorui angled her Deep Forbidden upwards and shot straight for the underside of the carrier submarine, with Annette and the rest following behind. The GOOhNs immediately changed their movements and went straight for the Deep Forbidden, but Yorui put the machine through its paces, the trail from its underwater engines proof of the agile path the mobile suit took to dance through the waves of torpedoes and phonon maser blasts.

A few energy shots connected, but the Deep Forbidden's Geschmeidig Panzer system shrugged it off, and the first GOOhN died as Annette's Forbidden Blue emerged from the wake left behind the Deep Forbidden like a spectre; a trident struck out, piercing the ZAFT mobile suit in its mono-eye. The GOOhN aimed its arms at the Forbidden Blue, torpedoes armed, but the OMNI mobile suit's auxiliary arms reached out, batting the GOOhN's own arms aside as large claws unfolded and crushed the GOOhN's arm joints.

Swinging the trident, the Forbidden Blue kicked the GOOhN off its weapon and fired a phonon maser shot that burned through the ZAFT MS in a second. A distance away, Trident Five and Nine disposed of a GOOhN and chased after another damaged MS, torpedoes firing, and Yorui had another GOOhN impaled on her mobile suit's trident; her first target was in pieces and already sinking beyond reach.

"Acoustic ping," Yorui said. "The sub is launching seeker torpedoes."

Even as Yorui spoke, four massive torpedoes erupted from the front of the submarine. Almost immediately they arced, and within seconds the torpedoes opened up to reveal several smaller seeker warheads that quickly homed in on Annette and her team.

"Looks like OMNI intelligence weren't diligent enough in keeping the Forbidden variants under wraps," Annette said.

"It was bound to happen anyhow," Yorui said. Slamming a large claw into a GOOhN, she thrust the trident at the ZAFT MS, taking off its left leg in a single strike. The GOOhN brought its arms to bear and fired a wave of torpedoes; with a burst of wake the Deep Forbidden's backpack slid into its normal position and fired its engines, propelling the MS upwards. In the next instant the backpack had flipped back into attack position, and a phonon maser blast cored the MS through and through. "We wouldn't be able to hide our successes for long either way."

Annette shoved away a GOOhN that was in her way, letting Trident Five spear it on an attack run; evading another wave of torpedoes, the Forbidden Blue stopped over one of the top bay doors of the Vosgulov and fired its torpedoes and phonon maser, melting a path through.

Letting the sudden suction wash her mobile suit in, the Forbidden Blue landed with a sound of crashing metal in the top launch bays of the submarine; Annette could see unprotected crewmembers getting washed away in the flash flood, and those that were far enough were running for the blast doors. The backpack of the Forbidden Blue slid back and revealed its head, and its head-mounted CIWS blazed as the automatic fire chased the last of the fleeing Coordinators into bloody splatters on the walls.

_This is for Mother and Father_, Annette thought. _And Forzene, for what you did to him on the first of April_.

The Forbidden Blue slammed its trident into the alloy panels of the hangar floor; its auxiliary arms shot out and grabbed the offending launch rails, twisting them out of their frames, and the mobile suit raised both arms.

The Forbidden Blue's Armfeuer 115mm machine cannons popped their waterproof covers and blazed to life a second later, sending high-explosive rounds into the interior superstructure of the the water continued to rapidly fill the interior of the aerial launch bay, the Forbidden Blue retracted its cannons and slammed a claw into a closed blast door.

Annette barely glanced at the explosion of bubbles from the resultant leak, and the Forbidden Blue's backpack closed back into attack mode just as the hangar became completely filled with water. With a single blast that covered the entire Forbidden Blue in steam, the mobile suit shot a high-powered beam into the heart of the submarine, and the entire vessel, its exterior already scored with maser blasts and torpedo hits, collapsed upon itself as the Forbidden Blue shot emerged back into open waters.

"Got the sub and its goons too," Trident Nine said, her voice filled with vindication. "We'll win easy at this rate."

"We need to aspire to be more," Annette replied. "Trident Leader to allies all open, does anyone have a surface status update? Jamming and interference is still high down here."

A burst of statics, and a reply came through. "This is the _Des Moines_-class _Thunder Rhapsody_, I read you with distortion. Surface situation is clear-green, the ZAFT fleet has been broken at the starboard side by surface ships and their air force is tied with ours. We got your good work on acoustics here."

"Thanks," Annette replied. "How about class-three alerts?"

"OMNI Space Command is warning us about possible fleet movements," the _Thunder Rhapsody's _operator replied. "Weather's clearing up soon; there might be an orbital drop. The fleet has also detected enemy ships pulling away, possibly towards Gibraltar or even through the Suez to escape into open seas."

The operator paused for a moment. "We need you to spearhead a push into the centre of the fleet to disrupt that plan, if it's possible. You'll be working alongside the 63rd Naval Armor Tactics Squadron_; _surface backup includes the _Des Moines_-class _Thunder Rhapsody_ and _Shinano_, and the _Arkansas_-class _Cosgarach Mhor_ and the _Patriot_."

"Acknowledged," Annette replied. "Trident Leader out."

Hoski's Deep Forbidden angled into position with his team as eight mobile suits made for the heart of ZAFT's formation. "We did away with another Vosgulov and its escorts, but we lost Trident Three to a ZnO attack. Ran too far out and got ambushed."

Annette closed her eyes for a second. "We'll collect his dues from ZAFT with this next battle. _Tridents_, advance!"

**CE 71 July 24th, 12 kilometres from Battlegroup _Astra_ First Combat Line, Casablanca Sea, 420 kilometres offshore Morocco, African Community**

**Morning 08 12**

Astor craned his neck to try and catch sight of the Infestus trailing behind him. The warning siren blared unendingly in his ears as the ZAFT pilot loosed another missile shot at his fighter, and Astor unconsciously took a breath before he hit the flares button and moved his joystick. His view of the world blurred, the grey skies of the Casablanca broken by emerging rays of light quickly switching to the grey-blue of the seas as the Spearhead dived.

At least the wind and rain were mostly gone.

The fighter rumbled, and Astor pulled his craft into a _chandelle_ even as he increased its speed, and the ZAFT fighter followed suit as Katar Four quickly pulled into position and fired a Sledgehammer. The Infestus threw flares, but its pilot was unwilling to give up his kill even as his own missile hit Astor's flares.

Astor clenched his teeth as he slammed the joystick the other way, putting the fighter into a curve downwards that the ZAFT fighter emulated with a tighter turn, its thrust-vectoring engines roaring. The ZAFT pilot made ready to go for a gunkill when Astor's Spearhead managed an even tighter turn, its engines in VTOL mode, and the Infestus pilot had a second to curse at forgetting this aspect of the Spearhead's aerial capabilities when a missile slammed into its engines, the explosion shearing the fighter in two.

Astor gasped for breath as he righted his fighter. "Good kill, Katar Three."

"My pleasure," the reply came. "We're nearing the end, after all; best to do is stay alive."

Astor took a look below at the Casablanca Sea, which was decorated with the wreckage of sinking and burning vessels; at a quick count, there seemed to be an equal number of ZAFT losses to OMNI losses.

Below them, several _Vosgulov_ submarines were providing anti-air missile cover alongside automated Guul lifters; one squadron charged in and shot down a handful of Guuls, and the submarine behind them vanished in a carpet of fire as a squadron of Spearheads from a separate attack wave struck the vessel with AGM-228C Picket anti-ground missiles, pulling out of the enemy's range before they could retaliate. DINNs and Infestus made to chase the Spearheads, but with ZAFT forced on the defensive, they couldn't do anything more.

Astor had seen this scene multiple times since the ZAFT forces had began to give way. Chipping away at ZAFT's air defences had allowed them to strike the submarines, and with half of their vessels confirmed sunk, ZAFT was now facing a hard choice.

The four Spearheads made a sweeping pass, climbing above the clouds; it was a carpet of slowly-dissipating grey, a stark contrast to the clear blue skies above. The air battle was already dying down; both ZAFT and OMNI aerial forces had gone at each other during the worst of the storm, and OMNI had held the advantage by staggering their fighter waves to swap out exhausted forces, flank enemy formations and generally kept ZAFT forces confused as to where they should focus their firepower.

Astor had just realized it, but OMNI had actually engaged ZAFT aerial forces with numerical inferiority throughout the entire battle, as it had reserved a group to run airstrikes against the exposed rear-of-the-line submarines and their Guul defences. It was only by placing _Arkansas_-class cruisers at strategic locations that allowed them to gain the upper hand; Astor had seen a good number of DINNs make ready to destroy flights of Spearheads, only for a surface-to-air missile to swat them out of the skies.

Nevertheless, air losses had not been slight. Not counting the numerous fighters from other squadrons, Katar Leader had been forced to bail something during the battle, and Katar Flight Three had been silent for quite a while now. Astor hoped that the latter was a comms failure, but something in his heart told him that he knew better.

"Flight Two, status report," Astor said. There wasn't any overwhelming situation now, and Astor wanted his team to land and rest up some before he had to lead them into the grinder again. "I have two Sledgehammers and one Longstriker. No guns though."

"Katar Three, all green with no Sledgehammers. I'm winchester on guns too."

"Katar Four, that was my last missile. Recommend we land to collect more presents for the gene patchies."

"Katar Five here. Two Sledgehammers and 50 rounds for the cannon."

_We could all use a re-arming_, Astor thought. Just at that moment, the comms opened.

"This is Astra Prime to all squadrons," the operator said. "All Wave 1 and 4 aircraft at 50% or less fuel and ammunition should return; fighters from Wave 2 and 3 will cover your retreat. Re-arm and prepare to cut off ZAFT's escape plans."

"Oh?" Katar Four said. "Well that's awesome!"

"Looks like we've had it easy," Katar Five said, his relief nearly audible on the channel. "They might be on the defensive, but damn if they're not hard to beat."

_Well, when you corner a desperate creature…_ Astor thought. A sudden siren pushed that thought out of his mind as he quickly checked his signals. "Hard enemy radar spike!"

"Spike on Three, I repeat, spike on Three!" Katar Three immediately put his fighter in a steep dive. "Three to Five, do you see him?!"

"Got a visual," Katar Five replied. "Shit-eating bastard's launching missiles!"

The pair of DINNs that had suddenly pulled up from the sea surface headed straight for the Spearheads, their 76mm rifles blazing. Smoke erupted from the torso of one of the DINNs as it launched a second volley of missiles, and the Spearheads of Katar Flight Two scatted, throwing flares as they went.

The DINNs shot after Katar Three and Five as Astor and Katar Four turned their fighters as fast as they could. "Bastards," Katar Four remarked. "Going after targets that are running empty!"

_I don't think they know, _Astor thought, keeping that thought to himself. "Those are probably the diversionary forces for the ZAFT retreat. Heads-up, Four, we haven't had a DINN kill since the one at the start of the battle. Let's net ourselves a good one before we head back to the sea-house!"

The Spearheads roared, the DINNs gave chase, and the six aerial fighting machines vanished into the clouds over the Casablanca Sea.

**CE 71 July 24th, Hangar Block East-Sixteen, Gibraltar Main Base, ZAFT-controlled Spain, Europe**

**Morning 08 27**

Fredric Koherng was angry. More than that, he was pissed as all hell.

"What the hell do you mean," he said, keeping his grip firm on the collar of a ensign, "That we're pulling out?!"

"T-That's what the Commander said, sir," the green-shirted soldier replied, trying to keep his voice straight. "The Eurasian forces are staging an attack on Gibraltar Base and will arrive in an hour's time. They've given the order to abandon the base-"

"Rest it, Koherg," Grace Sakerfield put her hand on his shoulder. "It's a lost cause."

Fredric let go of the soldier, who quickly scampered away, glad to be away from the angry officer. Fredric breathed once to get his voice level again before answering. "The enemy hasn't even come this far up the lines, yet we're turning tail and running?"

Grace shrugged. "Between OMNI's Task Force Lima chasing the remnants of the Victoria occupation force towards us via Algeria, the Europeans coming from the Saragossa Absolute Defence Line, and now the task force coming in through the Casablanca, I don't see our chances being any better than a dead cockroach's. Things have been taking a turn for the worse since they introduced Mobile Suits into their forces."

Fredric turned to see the shuttles taking off one by one. The tarmac was a flurry of activity as troops and personnel hurried around carrying what they could salvage; Fredric could see the military police trying to keep a semblance of order. Entire mobile suits were being left behind as the once-proud soldiers of ZAFT were forced to leave what they could in order to save their lives. "What about the naval forces?"

Grace kept her tone level, although she felt anything but calm. "They've decided to leave a harassing force while the main fleet breaks for the Suez Canal. If they can get away, they'll be free from pursuit; OMNI doesn't have anything close enough to catch them before they can escape to the Red Sea. The harassers themselves will flee from combat once the main fleet has disengaged far enough."

Fredric was silent for a moment. "… There really isn't any way to recover from this, isn't it?"

Grace's reply was taciturn. "Not since we lost Victoria, no." She crossed her arms and looked outside at the latest flight, a massive trans-atmospheric shuttle roaring into the skies. The sign of the red cross was painted on its side.

"We lost the initiative when we failed to attempt any breaks at the Saragossa Defence Line after taking over Gibraltar; we thought Geneva a low-priority target compared to the mass-drivers. We failed to rectify our mistake when we choose to sit in Victoria and wait out the African Campaign; we thought OMNI would never recover enough within a year to attempt to dislodge us. We continued to add to our misjudgement when we attempted to take JOSH-A intact; even without the leak, we had been spreading our forces thin to gather enough troops for the assault."

Grace turned to Fredric. "There're a lot of places in this war where we could have pulled the rug out from under OMNI's feet, but failed to do so. We really lost this one."

Fredric slumped against the wall. "So we retreat to space? Hide in our colonies, await the Earth Alliance to come up with a way to sling asteroids at the PLANTs?"

Grace gave a mirthless laugh, pointing to the crowds outside. "Nay, these cowards are escaping to the colonies. We, on the other hand…"

Grace cracked her knuckles as Alan Reidr approached them, order documents in hand. "… Have another place to protect."

Fredric stood up, a smile tugging at the corners of his lips. "Heh."

Alan stopped as his two wingmates approached him. "Get geared up. We're part of the lucky group going to the Carpentaria Military Establishment."

He made a bitter smile. "And we're part of the forces staying behind for the end of the world."

_Afterword: _

_Well this is a pretty just-there chapter, not much to put into the ending despite its importance. The Second Casablanca Sea battle was originally an event that largely went unnoticed (it actually took place well after the SEED crew escaped from Orb into space, so there you have it) and I thought it would be a nice thing to just have something showcasing what happens there._

_Not much of a hard fight for OMNI either way. Apart from having evened out the tech gap, ZAFT abandons the base and withdraws to Carpentaria and eventually space._

_A little something different in leaving the ending open-ended. I hope it doesn't seem like a cheap cop-out. _


	17. Chapter 17:Into the Heart of Carpentaria

_Author's Note:_

_This fanfic is to write upon some of the events in Gundam SEED and SEED Destiny that are not touched upon or mentioned in-series, but their dates are listed on GundamWikia and are thus treated as part of canon. They are therefore based upon actual happenings in the Cosmic Era universe, but the events within them are open to interpretation. This fanfic is also an attempt at showcasing a "what-if" of all sides involved in the wars, and how some of the events within the show might have come to be._

**Gundam SEED: Tales of the Cosmic Era**

**Chapter 17: Into the Heart of Carpentaria**

**CE 71 August 8th, _Agamemnon_-class Carrier_ Iron Lady_, in stable orbit over Ayers Rock, Australia, ZAFT-allied Oceanic Union**

**Morning 04 34**

Lieutenant Guy Leon, second-in-command of the 78th Armor Tactics Squadron _Titan Hunters_, glanced at his Strike Dagger's display screens. Mere hours had passed since his launch from the Habilis Mass Driver from the Victoria Supercomplex, and he was already missing the view of solid ground.

Guy reached out and touched the photograph slotted into a corner of the cockpit. The smiles of both his wife and daughter were all that he saw, the three of them standing outside their former residence in the suburbs of New York, in the Atlantic Federation.

It was a weird situation, the husband of a Coordinator serving in OMNI at this point of time. Even though he held a dual Atlantic/Eurasian Federation citizenship, this advantage hadn't prevented the Atlantic authorities from attempting to investigate his family. He had moved them to Copernicus City, both because the area had an autonomous internal government, and because anti-Coordinator laws were much less relaxed in space, where their expertise was appreciated by those who worked with them.

Getting them out of the claws of the increasingly xenophobic and fear-mongering Atlantic Federation had been hard, and the harder question had come later; how to provide for them. And so, Guy had swallowed his pride and the sideway glances of more than a few of his fellow soldiers to continue to provide for his family.

It was tough to have relations to a Coordinator since the war started; Guy found few people who wanted to know more. Tolerance thankfully seemed normal, as opposed to the barely-concealed hate that seemed to be popular with the politicians and higher-ranked officers when they talked in a public area. He had seen his fair share of radicals even amongst the rank and file, however, and he didn't like it one bit.

"This is Iron Prime to all forces. Prepare for drop operation in one minute."

Guy had once been a tank company commander; while he had gone through both land- and space- pilot training during the conversion course, he was, at his heart, a ground pounder. Not only was he in space now, with a full view of the Earth below, but in a few minutes he was about to be shot though space and air into solid ground and rock. It was a far cry from the stability of a battle tank, even when it was moving at top speed on rocky terrain.

The mobile suit's display screen flared for one last time from the light of the Sun as the landing pod's doors closed. Surrounded by near-total darkness, the only glow was from the Strike Dagger's cockpit displays and various controls.

The comms lighted up as a channel connected, and another pilot of the _Titan Hunters_ appeared on-screen. Second Lieutenant Michelle Elstar's face appeared to the left of his display screen, the lights in her mobile suit's darkened cockpit glinting off her helmet's faceplate. "Sir, Hunter Ten is ready."

Another screen appeared, followed by a third one beside it. Lieutenant Morrison Farren checked the last of his controls before reporting his status. "Hunter Eleven ready."

Second Lieutenant Sarah Jessein turned her view from a display linked to an external camera view of the Earth to face Guy on the comms screen. "Hunter Twelve ready."

They were all so young, but so eager. Of the four under his command, only Morrison had been with him since Victoria; the rest were new transfers. "Hunter Four to all, roger," Guy opened a link to his squadron commander. "Second Team to Hunter Leader, all checks out. Ready for atmospheric drop."

The azure eyes of Major Royston Kerulen greeted Guy as he replied. "Noted. Hunter Leader to all Hunters, listen up."

Guy settled into his seat, feeling the tug of the restraints reduce as Royston continued his pre-combat speech. "The goal of this operation is to drop a force into the middle of Australia, and secure Ayers Rock as a vantage point to set up our command post. After that, an air force will be launched from a base in New Guinea, which will carry most of the command material, personnel, and the air support for our operation, and an Atlantic Federation fleet in the area will stage a sea-based assault on Carpentaria Base itself once we're close enough to attack from land. The Australians are not going to look upon his incursion kindly; prepare to face up to 80% of their anti-air and ground forces once in range."

Guy switched to an external viewcam and saw the ships dropping off silver-carapaced re-entry pods, the massive devices quickly fading into white spots against the backdrop of the Earth's surface. A moment later, the pod beside his disengaged, separating its locking bolts from the ship's clamps; its rocket thrusters fired, pushing it downwards.

With the loud sound of metal slamming against metal, followed by the muffled _whump_ of an explosion, Guy felt his stomach vanish as his own pod started a full-speed descent downwards. Everything was weightless for a moment, and Guy had an urge to reach for the starry view shown on his Strike Dagger's viewscreens. That impulse quickly vanished as the pods entered the grasp of Earth's gravity, and Guy felt the weight on his body come back; his arm fell back to its position on the mobile suit's left control stick as the pod started shaking, and the view outside began to be tinted in orange.

Guy keyed in a few commands to slave the pod's controls to his own. "Descent is at normal speed, capping out at 7Gs acceleration for the next twenty seconds. Eight minutes twenty seconds to absolute limit."

No sooner had Guy finished his initial checks did the re-entry pod hit the atmosphere. The turbulent shaking that came from the pod pushing superheated air out of its way came almost immediately.

"T-this i-is s-some r-ride," Sarah Jessein said, her teeth chattering from the constant shaking the pod produced as it punched through the atmosphere.

Like all of them, Guy's only experience with orbital drop operations up until today had been in simulations. He willed himself to keep calm, however; he had a leader's image to preserve, and if he lost it, the others would have to take over control of the pod. He'd rather not wish that upon those under his command.

Guy brought up the vitals of his teammates, displaying them on his viewscreen. Sarah's pulse was well elevated beyond normal human levels, but she hid that well; her face on the display screen had but the slightest frown. Morrison's report registered increased heartbeat rate and unnatural muscle tension on his shoulders and hands, but he was otherwise doing fine. Michelle was unarguably the worst of the lot; she had closed her eyes shut, and Guy found it a wonder that she hadn't gone into cardiac arrest with her heart-rate levels.

"We should be h-happy that our operations are all mostly aimed at s-space after this," Guy said, making minute course corrections to the pod. "We're not part of any p-permanent orbital f-forces, so we w-won't be doing this on a c-constant basis."

"I'm m-more worried about the a-anti-air that Hunter Leader warned about," Morrison said. "These S-strike Daggers are hardly c-capable of m-manoeuvring through the air, much l-less evasive manoeuvres."

"A-at least we h-have support on m-multiple fronts in t-this operation-n," Guy said. "Hunter F-four to a-all; we've j-just passed t-the optimal release l-line. I'm g-going to start d-deceler-a-ation, so brace y-yourselves."

The other pilots of Second Team acknowledged the order and made ready for the violent shaking that was soon to follow. Guy readied his fingers over the controls. "Hunter Four t-to a-all. D-decelera-atin-ng o-on my m-mark."

A low siren sounded as the pod's computers marked the device's relative distance to the ground, indicating that the second stage was ready to be initiated. "M-mark," Guy said, activating the command to slow the drop pod down.

The shaking became more violent for an instant, and Guy clenched his teeth as the drop pod fired retrorockets. Guy kept an eye on the speed counter as it displayed the pod's velocity, which had quickly reduced to tolerable levels; the jaw-chattering shaking had stopped. "Ablative layer is still holding, structural integrity is at 8% strain. Everything is within expected parameters."

A loud alarm from an all-allied channel sounded out. "This is Heat Leader to all forces! I'm detecting SAM signals from all over the place!"

"Dammit," Sarah said through clenched teeth. "The Australians were ready for us!"

Orders began to sound out all over the allied channel. "We're landing on their national symbol, this response is to be expected." Guy said. Nevertheless, he kept his fingers over the control panel, ready to purge the pod on a moment's notice.

A loud siren confirmed his suspicions. "SAM on course!" Guy entered the controls to purge the re-entry pod. "Purging!"

White vapour washed over everything as the drop pod came apart at its seams, the explosive bolts sending the fragments spiralling away. Guy felt his body getting pulled in different directions as he activated his mobile suit's thrusters. "Hunters! Initiate third-stage deceleration!"

**CE 71 August 8th, 8 kilometres over Ayers Rock, Australia, ZAFT-allied Oceanic Union**

**Morning 03 34**

Fire flashed in his vision as Guy manoeuvred his Strike Dagger through a massive hailstorm of fire, its shield held in front for some measure of protection. Around him, the ninety-two mobile suits of the orbital drop force weaved their way through the maze of anti-air fire, CIWS guns flashing and flares trailing as they dodged incoming missiles. Oceania Union fighters sunk their fangs into the flanks of the falling mobile suits, with missiles impacting into CIWS return fire and the occasional shield; Guy could hear someone scream something about a casualty.

"Second Team! Prepare for first-stage attack!" Guy shouted, pulling a scope from the side of the cockpit and placing it in front of his visor. Targets were silhouetted in red, and Guy squeezed the trigger.

His Strike Dagger steadied its 58mm assault cannon and did likewise, sending heavy-calibre rounds in a continuous stream towards his chosen targets, a battery of camouflaged light anti-air missile launchers. The burst destroyed two of the light vehicles, and the others started to move away.

Green beams and 58mm rounds alike lanced out from the mobile suit formation to strike at the Oceania Union forces arrayed around them. The land was covered in dust and debris as the wind blew the obscuring clouds kicked up by weapons fire over the base of Ayers Rock; trails of fire fell out of the skies as the Oceania Union fighters began to suffer losses.

"Spike Leader to Spike all, focus fire on the fighters! Leave the ground forces to the other squadrons!"

Several Duel Fortrestra Daggers turned to open fire on the approaching wave of fighters, their shots downing several before the majority of fighters decided to pull out of their attack run. Smoke erupted from the left shoulders of the Fortrestra units as missiles chased down the remaining aircraft that refused to abort their assault.

Leaving air defence to the others, Guy turned his attention to the ground. Allied forces had already touched down, but were being suppressed by a mixture of ZAFT and Oceania Union forces; the familiar blinding flashes of light came from Linear Tanks and Linear Artillery firing their main guns, positioned in well-dug tank scrapes. Positioned too far back from the tanks to easily threaten them, the mobile suits began to come under fire as they continued their drop operation. Supplemented by ZAFT CAVs outfitted for anti-armour missile warfare, the combined force of armoured vehicles continued to pick off the OMNI mobile suits.

Guy was a former tank commander; he had personally sent ZAFT mobile suits to hell with the Linear Tank's slow but powerful main gun, and the mobile suits of OMNI were no exception to that rule; already two rising columns of smoke on the ground indicated where friendly forces had landed and were taken out. "Hunter Four to Second Team! Direct your fire on my waypoint!"

Green acknowledgement lights flashed once on Guy's HUD as the Strike Daggers under his command turned and fired their weapons at a company of twelve tanks clustered together, protected by two CAVs,. Guy let the targeting computer compensate for the Strike Dagger's inherent stability while in freefall; his finger tightened on the trigger, waiting for the reticule to turn red, before letting a stream of 58mm rounds fly.

The tanks shuddered from the impacts, and their turrets turned to face the new threat; sparks showered off their armoured surfaces as the uranium-depleted solid rounds of the 58mm machineguns carried by Guy and Sarah simply bounced off the tanks and into the ground. The purpose of that was to attract their attention rather than; even when dropping through the air, a moving target was much harder to hit than a mobile suit on the ground and in the open.

A green beam lanced out from behind Guy and pierced one of the tanks; the vehicle exploded, flames erupting from its seams. The other tanks immediately emerged from their tankscrapes, and a second one stopped as a second green beam struck the tank from its front. The remaining tanks were quickly smashed by follow-up shots from the sky and land, and around the battlefield, the remaining airborne units that had escaped the initial SAM barrage began to do the same to the other tank units around the area.

"Good shooting, Hunter Twelve," Guy said, as the Strike Dagger fired its thrusters and touched down, quickly putting its shield in front. A sudden jerk and an explosion of soil to the left was telltale proof of a tank round that had deflected off the shield's edge, and Guy hunkered the Strike Dagger as close to the ground as was possible.

Morrison's Strike Dagger was beside his', returning fire with its beam rifle. "Thank you, sir."

Around them, other mobile suits were making contact with solid land again. While their target was Ayers Rock, not all of them had landed on it; most of the mobile suits had taken up position at the base of the natural monument to allow the longer-ranged units to get the advantage of height elevation. Above Second Team, green beam shots began to reach into the distance as the Buster Daggers, with their guns combined into Hyper Impulse Sniper Rifles, began working their ranged firepower to the limit. The thunderous roar of artillery fire followed soon after; several Buster Daggers had deployed their combined gun launchers and were now laying down a hail of fire on the Australian and ZAFT forces with high-explosive 350mm.

Royston's voice suddenly cut into the intercoms. "This is Hunter Leader to all forces, begin advance! Establish a perimeter 10 kilometres away from Ayer's Rock; we'll use that as our defensive line!"

"Hunter Two to Hunter Leader, acknowledged," Guy said.

"Hunter Three to Hunter Leader, I read you. Roger."

All around, the mobile suits of the landing force stood up, defensive equipment at the ready, and began a steady advance forward. One of the mobile suits to Sarah's right suddenly crumpled and collapsed to the ground, however; an armour-piercing round blew out from behind its torso, and the Strike Dagger vanished in a blast of orange flame and metallic debris.

"Sniper!" one of the pilots screamed into the allied comm, even as the other Strike Daggers kneeled down and positioned their shields facing the front, head units turning, saturating the immediate area with a multitude of sensor scans. "Heat Twelve is down!"

"Shit," Sarah said, her Strike Dagger moving close to Guy's to maximise the coverage of their shields. "ZAFT GINNs?"

"We don't' know," Guy said. "Keep up the assault! Force their heads down!"

"New information coming in," Morrison said. "Seeded drones are now online!"

New tactical data began to upload itself onto Guy's HUD as unmanned aerial drones, seeded by the orbital fleet after the drop, started to gather intel on their surroundings. Guy quickly spotted his target; a GINN OCHER equipped with a sniper rifle was concealed in a depression in the ground, and the enhanced visual feed showed it readying its next shot… right where Guy's Strike Dagger was.

The next second later, a wave of smoke spread from the ground as the GINN OCHER fired its weapon, even as Guy angled the Strike Dagger's shield; facing it head-on was not a smart choice, especially if its round was carrying a tandem-charge warhead. The impact came a second later as the anti-armour penetrator deflected off the shield and slammed into the ground.

"Get a lock on that and smother the place!" Guy ordered.

The mobile suits around Guy began unloading their weapons at the ground, in the direction where the round had come from. A multitude of beams, heavy-calibre cannon shots, and rockets struck the land, kicking up an enormous cloud of roiling red dust; a GINN OCHER boosted out of the smoke, the mangled remains of a sniper rifle clutched in its right arm.

The GINN crashed into the ground as a beam shot pierced its torso, followed by a multitude of rounds from guns still tracking the downed unit. When the smoke cleared, the metal corpse was barely recognizable.

"A scout unit?" Michelle said.

"Commando forces," Guy replied. "Keep alert; there're probably more around."

The Buster Daggers stationed on Aeyers Rock continued to fire, picking off ZAFT and Oceania Union units hidden around the landscape that were waiting to engage forces that got too close.

"This is Heat Five! I've got advancing contacts on my eleven… it's ZAFT BuCUES!"

"This is Shield Two, I have visuals on a BuCUE attack group headed my way as well."

"This is Saber Leader, I've detected multiple Oceanic Union tank forces bringing up the rear. Looks like it's a massive push this time."

If the drop force didn't take the initiative soon, they would be slaughtered. "Hunter Four to Second Team," Guy commanded. "Gather on my point! We'll stage a defence facing ten, near Heat Five's position!"

"Acknowledged!" Three voices replied, and four Strike Daggers turned to face their new direction, thunderous footsteps sounding out as the mobile suits ran to reinforce Heat Five's team. A high-pitched whine started as the Strike Daggers fired their thrusters, propelling themselves over the uneven battlefield to cover more land.

Dust clouds covered the battlefield as tanks rolled out of their dug covers, and ZAFT mobile suits sped forward to engage the enemy. Far-off, white contrails, like spears, reached into the skies from both sides before angling downwards; no doubt long-ranged surface-to-surface rocket strikes. Guy and his squad landed beside a group of three Strike Daggers, one of them holding a 94mm high-energy beam rifle.

"Heat Five to Hunter Two, I have five BuCUEs on visual, in addition to ZAFT close-air support." The Strike Dagger turned to face Guy's unit. "Thanks for coming."

"You can thank me if we survive this," Guy replied. "Hunter Two to Second Team, hold position! Prepare for barrage fire!"

Four Strike Daggers planted their shields into the ground and braced against them. "Set fire pattern to high intensity," Guy commanded. "60 degrees spread; fire when ready!"

Even as the BuCUEs approached, Heat Five's team had already made ready to engage the enemy; the first shot from the Strike Dagger with the 94mm beam rifle went out from a deliberate gap in-between the shield formation of Guy's team, the high-energy shot crossing the 15-kilometer distance between the ZAFT forces and the defence line in a heartbeat.

Despite the multitude of beams and shells arcing over, only one of the BuCUEs swerved to avoid the decisive shot; the only casualty was a ZAFT attack helicopter caught in the backwash of the beam, the aircraft crashing into the ground in a flashy display of broken parts and flaming fragments. The ZAFT units scattered and formed up into two units, approaching in a loose flanking formation.

"Stay calm!" Heat Five replied. "They can't cross ten klicks in three seconds. Prepare next shot!"

The other Strike Dagger fired again, the second shot reaching out to sear a BuCUE on the shoulder. Sparks erupted from all its left joints as its high-speed land travel worsened its internal damage, sending the ZAFT unit tumbling into the ground.

"Heat Six here! One down!" The Strike Dagger shifted aim. The third shot went wide as the BuCUEs began to zigzag, throwing off the pilot's aim.

"Hunter Eleven to all, the BuCUEs are coming into attack range!" Morrison said. "One kilometre left!"

The Strike Dagger fired again to no effect as the BuCUEs dodged the next shot. "Heat Six to all, I'm four shots to an empty battery!"

"Stow the rifle," Heat Five said. "All units! Prepare for close-combat!"

The area erupted in a thunderous roar two as the remaining BuCUEs let loose with a wave of missiles that saturated the entire area in fire; some slammed into the shields of the Strike Daggers; those that survived being shot down were deflected by the Strike Dagger's auto-jamming systems, flying random arcs before smashing into the ground. Their automatic failure fuses triggered seconds later and filled the area with explosions; the Strike Daggers' auto-targeting system became filled with false targets and errors from the sheer number of fragments and all the interference in the air.

The first BuCUE was just a hundred meters away when it leapt into the air, no doubt to come crashing down on the shields of Guy's team that were planted at a sloped angle into the ground. "Hunters! Ready!" Guy shouted.

The Strike Daggers grabbed their shields, and just as the BuCUE made to land heavily on them and break their formation for the attack choppers coming from behind, Morrison and Michelle rammed their shields upwards.

The sickening sound of twisting metal echoed across the vast red grounds, barely audible over the roar and rumble of combat. Pieces snapped off the shields as they bent and twisted from the impact; but the BuCUE getting rammed in its undersection was no better off, as its body deformed from the blow.

The quadrupled mobile suit was thrown over the shield formation, and slammed into the ground behind Guy's team, where Heat Eight quickly shot it with a 58mm machinegun. Then the battle was joined as the other BuCUEs slammed into the remaining Strike Daggers, the high-speed collision fragmenting the Guy's formation.

Guy's unit was thrown to the side from the impact, even as Michelle's Strike Dagger rolled with the blow and came up standing, rifle ditched, beam sabre at the ready. The BuCUE immediately thundered off as beam shots gouged holes of fused glass into the ground; Sarah joined her comrade's unit, her Strike Dagger firing beam shots as fast as it could.

Guy barely had time to shout out an order to group together when another BuCUE charged him, beam sabre shining. Pulling out his Strike Dagger's beam sabre, Guy left the weapon unactivated as he dropped the mobile suit's right shoulder, before bringing its arm forward and upwards in a high-speed horizontal swing. Bypassing the BuCUE's own beam sabre, which came in from the top, Guy's Strike Dagger listed to the left to avoid getting struck in the right shoulder, activated its own weapon mid-swing, and beheaded the ZAFT unit in one clean stroke.

Stabilizing the mobile suit, Guy watched as the Strike Daggers continued to fire their CIWS and beam weapons at the ZAFT forces; the BuCUEs, including the headless one, quickly formed up and retreated, firing smoke grenades into the air to mask their path. A majority of the attack helicopters and other conventional vehicles had been taken out; their parts littered the immediate area, small fires burning within some of their wreckages.

"Did they get the call to retreat?" Sarah asked. "The tactical map is emptying itself."

"Allied return fire from Aeyers Rock has stopped too," Morrison said. "Looks like ZAFT and the Oceania Union aren't crazy enough to try and defend this place without air and artillery support."

"Probably- the second wave of orbital reinforcements are due about now." Guy brought up a display of the mission clock. He had barely noticed it, but it was already close to seven o' clock; the first rays of the sun spread over the lands, illuminating the carnage left behind. "Hunter Two to Hunter all, no casualties on my side. Ammo and fuel stores moderate."

"Hunter Leader to all Hunters, roger that." Royston's calm voice sounded. "Hunter Leader to Iron Prime, lost Hunter Three and Five. All stores moderate."

Over the heads of the Strike Daggers standing on the land, white streaks of superheated air washed off another three dozen re-entry vehicles, carrying with them nearly fifty more mobile suits and assorted equipment. Following behind were heavy shuttle transports; enough of them to be carrying the minimum amount of materials to set up a hasty base.

"Heat Five to Heat all, Heat Seven is disabled a half-klick from my current position. All okay, all stores moderate."

"Heat Leader to Heat all, I hear you. Heat Leader to Iron Prime, lost Heat Twelve. All moderate."

"Spike Leader to Iron Prime, all present, all moderate."

"Blade Leader to Iron Prime, lost Blade Two and Six. Ammunition low."

One by one, the squadron leaders filed their reports. The entire process took a little over a minute before the intercom crackled again. "This is Blade Leader to all forces. Prepare to receive orbital supplies; command wants this place with long-range AA coverage by the next hour, so prepare to work quickly. Once that's done, we can establish a temporary airbase for the air force coming in to reinforce us."

Over Guy's head, dozens of drop pods made contact with the land, most of them landing at the foot of Ayers Rock. The casings depressurized with a cacophony of hissing sounds that Guy could hear, even at his position, and from within, launchers, disassembled radars other components slid out on racks. Guy recognized some of those parts as components of a new arsenal recently introduced into the Eurasian Federation.

With a range of up to 450 kilometres, the MR-7S Portable Sniper System, mounted on an that the components would eventually be assembled into was currently the strongest bombardment system that OMNI could field. The gun was mounted on a modified Linear Artillery chassis enlarged by 1.5 times, and it required a generator, towed by another vehicle, to fully power the gun.

Having the range of conventional anti-air missiles cut by passive N-Jammer effects in the atmosphere, the MR-7S could either fire a conventional round, a multi-warhead round, or a single encased missile; both could be accelerated to ten times the speed of sound, enough to take an aircraft by surprise, even at maximum range, and that was not counting if the shell was loaded with a seeker missile.

Even as the mobile suits set about retrieving the components that would comprise of the long-range, all-weather radar unit to be set on Ayer's Rock, Guy couldn't stop the uneasy feeling in his heart. An air attack by ZAFT against them was not out of the question, but Carpentaria's runways were all pointing inland. While the MR-7S was a powerful weapon, the ranges it was design to operate in meant that it was more suited for sniping operations; thus, as an anti-air weapon, it was only moderately successful. Fighters and DINNs were always considered bonus targets for MR-7S gunners.

The possibility that the MR-7S was going to be used to snipe fleeing troop ships rather than actual combatants unsettled Guy. Yet, fleeing troops were still troops, and unless they surrendered, they would return to = fight, this time in space. There was no justification for their escape, no matter how Guy tried to think about it, and he set those thoughts into the back of his mind even as the roar of heavy transport ships filled the air, carrying troops and supplies to the OMNI forces.

**CE 71 August 8th, _Spengler_-class Assault Ship**_ War-Head_**, Arafura Sea leading into the Gulf of Carpentaria, Australia**

**Night 23 46**

Captain Annette Selveta rubbed her hands together, a grimace on her face. Despite having changed into a long-sleeved military jumpsuit, the cold that had crept into her body during her fitful sleep since departing Port Dili, in the territory of East Timor, had penetrated all the way into her bones. Final adjustments still had to be done, however, and she figured that it was better to do them now, and then catch some sleep, than to leave it to the last moment.

In a little over six hours' time, the current battlegroup sailing into Oceanian waters, comprised of three assault ships and over two dozen other capital vessels, would clash head-on with the combined navies of the Oceania Union, as well as ZAFT's Carpentaria forces. Right now they were skirting around the side of Mornington Island that faced Australia's northern shores, hoping to avoid blue-water forces patrolling the Gulf of Carpentaria.

The plan called for the assault ships to place themselves as close to ZAFT's Carpentaria Base as was possible, and unleash the power of the mobile suits that they carried within; before they landed, the fleet would provide naval gunfire support, provided enemy forces hadn't engaged all of them.

Annette hoped that the fleet wouldn't get ambushed midway through the seas, before they can make landfall. The possibility was high, however; the Carpentaria base was ZAFT's last stronghold, located in an allied location. Kaohsiung had already been surrounded, albeit by a loose OMNI force, and word had it that ZAFT had turtled into the base.

Overhead, the fleet was going to be supported by OMNI's air forces that had launched from Indonesia, in addition to the fighters carried by the assault ships. It was a three-pronged strike against the enemy to secure their final earthbound stronghold.

The hard part had been getting a foothold on Australia. The Seventh, Eighth, and Tenth Armor Tactics Battalions had managed nicely in that regard, landing a mobile suit force via orbital insertion onto Aeyers Rock. Using the location as a rally point, the attackers had held off the Oceania and ZAFT forces as they solidified their hold, and for the entire day past they had engaged in sporadic fighting with picket forces sent to delay them.

From what she had heard of the reports, the Battalions, led by one Lt. Colonel Roan Moran, had repelled all attempts to dislodge them from their advance with little loss, and having been reinforced by the Eleventh Division, had covered 1200 kilometres in a straight line over the desert interior of Australia. That put them right on the doorstep of ZAFT's Carpentaria Military Establishment, where the remainder of their force waited; Annette heard that they had as much as two divisions of forces left in reserve, nearly the equal of the OMNI forces facing them in this battle.

It was going to be a titanic clash that would cost both sides dearly. But as long as an undisturbed ZAFT foothold remained on Earth, OMNI would not be able to launch attacks in space without fear of retaliation. Apart from Kaohsiung, which was currently blockaded by the OMNI forces in the Republic of East Asia, ZAFT's second and largest stronghold was at Carpentaria. If they choose to launch an attack on the blockade forces, it was highly likely that they would win, re-establish high-speed orbital capability and use it to disrupt OMNI's space-based forces. That would allow ZAFT's space forces to regroup and re-arm themselves, and that was not an acceptable option.

Annette entered the _War-Head_'s cavernous MS hangar; emerging from a bulkhead onto a sidewalk positioned a dozen meters above the hangar floor, she shielded her eyes from the harsh white lighting while her vision adjusted. Standing on the first slot was her mobile suit, a Forbidden Blue. It had went through more skirmishes with her than she could count, and it was with it that she had won her victories at Casablanca, the chase through Gibraltar. Now, it would once again guide her hand at Carpentaria.

**CE 71 August 9th, 67 kilometres from ZAFT Carpentaria Military Complex, Carpentaria, Australia, Oceanic Union**

**Night 04 41**

Guy's vision came back quickly as he opened his eyes. Within the darkened confines of the Strike Dagger's cockpit, a handful of blinking lights could be seen, and further out, the flat lands of Australia were displayed on the viewscreen. They were still a ways from the Carpentaria Military Complex and the shoreline, but the ground was already fairly uneven, pockmarked with gullies, small ravines, and filled with shrubs big and small, allowing the pilots of the _Titan_ _Hunters_ Squadron to keep their mobile suits under cover.

Rotating his neck and flexing his toes in an attempt to get rid of the unpleasant sensation of having his joints glued together, Guy ran the main start-up sequence for the Strike Dagger. The computer ran through the customary checks, acknowledging the attachment of extra weapons in form of the Strike Dagger's beam rifle, currently strapped to its waist clamps, the 58mm machinegun the Strike Dagger held, and an extra 350mm Gae Bolg hyper bazooka strapped to its back with a clamp attachment. Squinting his eyes at the sudden light that emitted from the cockpit screens, Guy reached for a water bottle as the cockpit flooded with ambient light to even out the glare.

"Hunter Two to Second Team, it's time for our shift," Guy said, glancing at the mission clock. "On second thoughts, belay that. It's time for the final push, so fill yourselves and freshen up before we move on."

In quick order, the acknowledgement lights of the _Titan Hunter's_ Second Team winked on. "Hunter Ten here," Michelle said. "Felt like five minutes of sleep, but I'm ready to go."

"Hunter Eleven is okay," Morrison said.

"Hunter Twelve reporting," Sarah said, locking her fingers and stretching her hands out in front of her. "Have we received orders from mission command?"

"None at the moment," Guy said, tearing open a packet of powdered coffee from his rations. It was soluble even in cold water, but rather than add it to his field bottle, Guy threw back his head and emptied the entire packet of powder into his mouth; it was the taste that provided the initial wake-up kick, after all. Small sounds of crunching could be heard by the other members of Second Team as Guy continued. "But considering how the advance has slowed down the past few hours, we're going to need the extra time to synch our attack with the fleet coming in from the Gulf of Carpentaria."

"True," Morrison said, unwrapping a food bar. "No doubt ZAFT will have more ambushes and mines strung out up front to impede our progress. The land here makes for good hiding, but it's equally harsh to a quick advance. We haven't even been able to use vehicle support in here."

Michelle sprinkled some water from her bottle onto her hands, and wiped it all over her face. "How are the other teams doing on the advance, Hunter Two?"

"Fairly decent, all things considered," Guy said as, scrolling through the mission map. "Spike, Heat and Flail Squadrons managed to advance a further eight kilometres from our current position, which was where we were told to hold for our rest. I guess we should be joining them."

As if on cue, Royston's voice came in over the squadron channel. "This is Hunter Leader to Hunter all, we're changing positions. We'll be replacing Spike, Heat and Flail Squadrons, alongside Blade, Lancer and Knife Squadrons. Once in position, we'll advance a further ten kilometres and hold until the attack force has gathered for the final phase before launching an all-out assault on Carpentaria Base itself. Roger?"

"Hunter Two to Hunter Leader, acknowledged," Guy said.

With a jerk, the Strike Dagger reached out, braced itself and climbed out of the gully that it was hidden in. All around Guy's unit were similar scenes, the blue lighted visors of Strike Daggers indicative of mobile suits emerging from the ground, weapons at ready. Under the starry night, the OMNI force moved forward, the echoes of heavy movement upon the uneven ground the only sound for miles.

**CE 71 August 9th, 7 kilometres from ZAFT Carpentaria Military Complex, Tertiary Defence Line, Carpentaria, Australia, Oceanic Union**

**Night 05 27**

Grace Sakerfield awoke silently, her helmet set on her thighs, her arms crossed in front of her, with the soft sounds of the GINN OCHER's drive system on standby filling the cockpit. Booting up the sequence, she breathed in deeply and exhaled, letting the vestiges of her drowsiness leave her body system; feeling returned to her shoulders, legs and arms. Such was the advantage of Coordinators that their body was more adapted to the little things in life that mattered; a Natural would, at this point, crawl out of sleep, half-awake, but a Coordinator's body would instinctively understand that it needed to get to full functionality within a short time; the muscles would flex themselves with tiny electric signals from the nerves, and the body would release the appropriate chemicals into the bloodstream. To Grace, stretching was a luxury.

That was what a Coordinator meant. To coordinate, streamline, make efficient. Not to be a superhuman.

Which was why she was currently stationed on the Tertiary Defence Line of the Carpentaria Military Complex, rather than crushing the enemy at the Saragossa Absolute Defence Line.

They had lost that location a month ago when OMNI won the Second Casablanca Sea Battle, and after holding off the enemy force for their fleeing brethren, they had retreated through the Suez to the Maldives, where she had faced off against a surprise attack by OMNI on the island base established by ZAFT there. It had been a heated battle, with OMNI's small but determined force using ridiculous tactics such as ramming a _Spengler_-class assault ship into the base itself, followed by an attack by OMNI ace pilots such as Edward "The Ripper" Harrelson and Rena "Sakura Burst" Imelia. Grace herself had crossed swords with them before the retreat order had come through; it had been weeks of a desperate, ship-borne cat-and-mouse game until they finally shook off their pursuers, days prior to setting foot on Carpentaria.

Shrugging off its camouflage net, Grace's GINN OCHER hefted its solid titanium-alloy axe and stood up. Beside her, several other mobile suits did the same; to her right, Reidr Team's squad leader, Alan Reidr, piloted a GuAIZ, the headfin of the desert-camouflaged unit glinting in the moonlight that shone through the clouds overhead. On her left, Fredric Koherng, the Reidr Team's third member, emerged from hiding, the Barrus heavy beam cannon held by his GINN OCHER a contrast to the otherwise lightly-armed members of the Reidr Team.

Alan had been assigned the GuAIZ as a test deployment to see how well ZAFT's newest toy performed in gravity conditions. Even on the verge of defeat, contingency plans still had to be made in case they needed to do a re-invasion.

That thought was pushed out of Grace's mind, however, as all around them, nearly two dozen mobile suits emerged from their hidden locations. Mono-eyes flashing, all of them directed their gazes towards the darkness that was the land leading into Central Australia.

While not possible with human sight, a Coordinator's enhanced vision would have picked out small specks of light in the far distance. With a mobile suit's enhanced sensors and magnification capabilities, Grace could see what looked like wavering blue bars of light in the distance.

"This is Reider Leader to all units. We engage the enemy with sniper fire as per the plan, then fall back to the second defence line where we will hold them."

"Can we expect reinforcements from the Oceania Union?" Another pilot asked.

"Negative," Alan replied. "Latest reports show that OMNI is engaging in probing attacks on military installations in and around Perth, West Australia. Well, ZAFT Command believes it to be probing attacks, but the Oceania Union is reluctant to believe otherwise."

Fredric sighed. "Common sense dictates that a pure sea assault would be a terrible waste of resources, considering the size of OMNI, and the Oceania Union forces currently stationed there."

"ZAFT command already has contingency plans in the event that we're unable to rely on the Oceania Union for support," Grace replied. "Either way, they're still thoughtful enough to leave a division of tanks behind as support. All that's left now is to hit them hard."

All around, the various mobile suits got into position; a fair number of them were carrying sniper rifles, and even with the uneven terrain, Grace was sure that the OMNI mobile suits had to expose themselves when moving.

"Something's not right," one of the pilots said. "They're advancing almost too quickly. They'll be within range of the snipers in a few minute or so… but they aren't using any cover fire."

Alan was silent for a moment. "What about our air forces?"

"We have Infestus fighters stationed just one kilometre behind us, right where the Oceania Union forces are. They can get into the air for a bombing run in seconds."

"Pull them back." Alan said. "This is Reidr Leader to all forces, we're retreating!"

No sooner had Alan finished his order when a missile warning started to blare in Grace's cockpit. Silencing the alarm, she turned the GINN OCHER's sensors upwards, where long-range surface-to-surface rockets were headed straight for their positions… mixed in with air-to-ground missiles released by fighters that were previously hiding in cloud cover.

"Can't we just stand shoot them out of the sky?" Another pilot said.

"Negative," Fredric said. "It was a mistake to let the Oceania Union retreat after suffering losses during that first battle. That let the OMNI forces regroup and leapfrog their anti-air defences forward with their mobile suits."

Thrusters lighted up as the ZAFT mobile suits quickly evacuated the area, launching flares and smoke grenades as the missiles fell upon them in a storm of fire. Grace clenched her teeth as the GINN OCHER shook from the shockwaves of the carnage going off around it.

Upon landing, some of the mobile suits fired back, flashes of fire arcing into the darkness. There was rare chance of it actually hitting a target, but the fire was meant to suppress the enemy; if they had engaged in boosted jumps while under cover of that barrage, they would be a lot closer to the ZAFT troops than Grace was comfortable with. Her GINN OCHER unclipped its 76mm assault cannon and began firing into the darkness in bursts, sending fire to where she guessed the enemy was hiding at. Behind them, the Infestus strike fighters began to take off and return to Carpentaria.

"Incoming!" Another pilot said. "The fighters are back!"

"Fools," Alan grumbled. "All forces, face up! Fire at will!"

The OMNI fighters had overextended themselves; the ZAFT units had jumped back by roughly a kilometre or so, leaving the OMNI mobile suits far back. With the threat of a counterattack by ground lessened, the ZAFT units were free to fire back for a moment, but the fighters suddenly turned tail and angled back into the clouds.

"This is Reidr Leader to all forces! Belay last order! Continue retreat!" Alan said, the thrusters on his GuAIZ already lighting up. Like before, cockpit alarms started going off in every mobile suit; this time, however, it wasn't fighters, but mobile suits. One of them landed a mere four kilometres in front of the ZAFT formation, its shield burnt and scored in places. Grace guessed that the OMNI forces had jumped anyways, despite the suppressive fire from the ZAFT forces.

Beam shots began to arc towards the ZAFT formation as the mobile suits hurriedly ignited their thrusters and jumped. A GINN OCHER was in the air, jumping backwards, rifle aimed and ready to leave a parting shot, when a spear of light lanced out to hit the mobile suit squarely in the torso.

Grace was the closest to the first ZAFT casualty of the skirmish. "Snipers!" She yelled. "Everyone hit the ground!"

No sooner had she said that, when the sky began filling with crisscrossing green beams, each intent on catching a ZAFT mobile suit in its arc. The ZAFT mobile suits changed their angles, aiming for the ground, and just as the GINN OCHER's feet hit the dirt, Grace saw an Infestus fighter contact several kilometres ahead vanish off her screen.

"A railgun hit…" Grace said. "Reidr Two to all forces! The enemy has anti-air in the immediate area! I repeat, the enemy has immediate anti-air in the area!"

"How did we miss that?!" Another pilot said, his GINN OCHER trying to hide itself behind a meagre outcropping of rock. Sniper rifle ready, the mobile suit fired at the OMNI troops and ducked back as a beam shot sprayed molten material all over the ZAFT unit. "Come to think of it, we missed the air-to-ground missiles too!"

The loud scream of supersonic shells echoed though the air overhead as Alan checked his radar. "EWACS support on their side," he said, furiously typing away at the system keyboard. "But the jamming patterns here are something I've never seen before. It allows the recipient's systems to continue functioning as normal, but prevents it from registering incoming objects until at close distance where the system's own failsafes override the signals; it's something similar to a false broadcast. They flew in silent from high up, and then activated their systems, before coming down low to shoot at us; they basically used the ambient N-Jammer effect against us, knowing that we have the same reduced range as them."

"They can _blind _our systems now?" Fredric asked, incredulity in his voice.

"Probably only if it's a small group of low-intensity systems, like mobile suit computers." Alan said, his GuAIZ looking skywards. "Maybe a formation of RF-109s in combat link mode; it's not unheard of for them to be able to this much, at least." Entering a quick series of commands, he pushed the foldable keyboard back into its slot. "All units, change frequency to E-5, and engage counter-jamming protocol. It should hold until we can get back to Carpentaria's transmission range; if OMNI tries any jamming again, we'll be able to detect it, and react accordingly."

Alan's GuAIZ raised its rifle and fired, the green beam lancing out to pierce an approaching Strike Dagger in its torso. "Reidr Leader to all forces, we'll stagger our retreat. Canza, Grame, your teams are with me. Lanworth, you'll have command over the other ZAFT units."

"Acknowledged."

The ZAFT units quickly arranged themselves into two separate groups, with one moving off. The low rumble of powerful thrusters disappeared into the night as the units skirted the uneven ground where they could, and climbed over slopes that proved too high for the mobile suit to skate across. When they had reached roughly a kilometre's distance from Alan's team, they took up defensive formations, allowing Alan's team to retreat.

A GINN OCHER fired, the barrel blast from the sniper rifle toppling a nearby small tree as it accelerated its anti-armour round to beyond the speed of sound. There was an explosion far off, but the intensity of enemy fire only increased.

"Shit! It's like they're not even scared!"

Grace bit her lip as her GINN OCHER skirted the ground, the dust cloud nearly obscuring her unit as she evaded a particularly steep knoll. "They've been getting confident since Victoria, but this is beyond confident. It's like they have a master plan…"

**CE 71 August 9th, 10 kilometres from the Carpentaria Military Complex, Gulf of Carpentaria, Australia**

**Night 05 49**

Annette watched the viewscreen. So far, none of the ZAFT patrols in the Gulf of Carpentaria had discovered the fleet that was sailing up to meet the ZAFT forces in their own base, thanks to the new jamming algorithm that OMNI had supplied to their electronic warfare units. Added to the inherent background noise that had become a constant in all sensor systems since ZAFT seeded the world with their Neutron Jammers, that made it extremely hard to detect any unit that wanted to be hidden, and was outfitted to do so.

The Forbidden Blue watched from its position on the seabed as a _Vosgulov_ submarine passed by overhead. With support from RF-109 EWACS aircraft overhead, OMNI had sealed off the entire area from ZAFT sensors at Carpentaria.

The attack on Carpentaria was special in that unlike Victoria and Gibraltar, the forces converging on Carpentaria were far less in terms of numbers. That was made up for in terms of their combat experience across the globe, but ZAFT's forces in this battle were bound to be veterans as well.

The only advantage OMNI had was that it had only revealed its land advance so far. With inbound air forces and an assault planned from the sea, OMNI hoped to divide ZAFT's attention and overcome their forces with a combination of equal numbers and technology, supplanted with a three-way assault. OMNI's space forces were stretched thin diverting ZAFT's attention to other locations while the land forces cleared the planet of ZAFT's presence, so in this battle neither side could have an orbital advantage.

Annette had to admit the possibility that ZAFT had already seen through their ploy and was preparing a welcome party, but if they had discovered any part of the fleet at all, then they had to have guessed that OMNI wouldn't send a naval force as bait. No matter how confident they were in holding off both a land-based and sea-based assault, Annette was sure that they would be able to foresee the Carpentaria Base being wrecked beyond usability, no matter who won or lost. Unless the overall commander had balls of titanium, ZAFT would have tried to intercept the fleet before the land forces had come knocking.

The voice feed of the Forbidden Blue crackled as the battlegroup re-established contact with the mobile suit. "This is _War-Head_ to all forces, strike, strike, strike!"

Annette gripped the controls of her mobile suit. "Trident Leader to all Tridents, green light, I repeat, green light!"

Around the Forbidden Blue, seven Deep Forbiddens responded in like, cutting their ballast attachments and firing up their underwater engines. Contacts appeared around Annette's unit; the naval MS of the other squadrons were also on their way.

Barely a minute had elapsed, when the _Vosgulov_-class Annette had spotted was thoroughly sunk by multiple maser shots, the gigantic carcass sinking into the sea. The submarine didn't even have enough time to launch its complement of GOOhNs before the attack had occurred.

Annette checked her tactical map display as the other OMNI MS sunk the first submarine's partner warship, the second _Vosgulov_-class suffering the same fate. A low rumble permeated through the Forbidden Blue's reinforced cockpit as the warships of their battlegroup approached the Carpentaria Military Complex at maximum speed, their path bringing them over the naval MS squadrons.

Annette tapped her communication controls. "Trident Leader to all forces, vector in on approach to Carpentaria. Let's not be late for the assault."

**CE 71 August 9th, ZAFT Carpentaria Military Complex, Final Defence Line, Carpentaria, Australia, Oceania Union**

**Morning 06 05**

The GINN OCHER swung its axe, bringing it to slam against the Strike Dagger's shield. The lightweight OMNI MS stumbled, and, using the momentum, Grace's MS turned a full circle before savagely smashing the melee weapon into the torso of the OMNI MS.

Leaving the Strike Dagger to cook from its own internal explosions, the GINN OCHER fired its thrusters and boosted backwards, stopping at a turret tower. 58mm gunfire knocked chunks of reinforced concrete off the stationary defence fixture as Grace returned fire with her GINN OCHER's 76mm assault cannon.

The Strike Dagger firing at her ignored the heavy shells flying through the air, and with a burst of light, engaged its thrusters to dash straight at her. In one stroke, the Strike Dagger drew its beam sabre and slashed through the gun tower, and Grace's GINN OCHER barely ducked in time to avoid getting struck through its upper torso.

The viewscreen and tactical map was filled with static for a second as the beam sabre sliced through a portion of the GINN OCHER's head fin, and burned the armour off its backpack. In any other situation, Grace would be sorry for the loss of the GINN OCHER's advanced sensors and terrain vibration detectors, but in this case the area was so cluttered that it didn't matter; so long as her mobile suit's thrusters remained functional, that was good enough for her.

Bringing the heavy axe in a diagonal swing upwards, the GINN OCHER smashed the solid weapon into its outstretched arm, destroying the limb at its elbow joint. At the same time, the GINN OCHER reversed its grip on its rifle and thrust the assault cannon's butt into the Strike Dagger's torso, throwing the mobile suit backwards and onto the ground. With a sickening smash, Grace brought the axe down on the cockpit of the mobile suit, and for good measure shot it a few more times just in case.

"This is Reidr Two. Encountered two enemies at block two," Grace said, steadying her breath. Angling the rifle to its side, the weapon ejected its nearly-empty magazine, and Grace temporarily kept the heavy axe so she could reload the 70.6mm assault cannon. "Both destroyed."

"Reidr Leader here. Continue the defence."

_ Even if you ask me to…_ Grace thought, looking around. Both turrets in the area had been destroyed; while the first was at least still standing, albeit with its turret being left as a smoking stump from a beam rifle shot, the second one had been silenced, and later reduced to rubble. The rest of the area, while filled with charred shrubs, was nothing more than flat land.

Grace pushed those thoughts out of her head as she continued watching the trans-atmospheric shuttles take off. With heavy anti-air confirmed, the shuttles had to re-align themselves to the east, north or west of Australia before attempting to breach the atmosphere. In an attempt to avoid putting all their eggs in one basket, they were changing their directions each time they launched. This shuttle, the third to go, was the first one picked to head north.

Grace watched, awaiting an enemy presence as the heavy space-faring ship began to climb. Turning ponderously in the air, the shuttle angled north, heading for the airspace over South-East Asia, when a streak of light emerged from the west.

A second later, the panic-filled transmission that came in, combined with the streak of light smashing into the shuttle, eliciting a massive mid-air explosion seconds later, confirmed her suspicions.

"Bastards!" Grace cursed. "They were this close?!"

"This is Carpentaria Mission Command! Enemy warships detected off the coast; they're hitting shore in 2 minutes! Shuttle Three is down from an AA hit from the mainland!"

"This is bullshit," a pilot said over the public comms. "Mobile suits I understand, but how did we not see a goddamned fleet sailing up?!"

"Probably skirting the islands to the west of Carpentaria, combined with ECM operations overhead." Fredric said, adding his thoughts. "It's slow, and does have the danger of being beached, but it can be done. They probably timed it with the land assault too."

Grace gritted her teeth. "Both ways, eh?"

"At this point, I won't be surprised if they have an air force inbound from somewhere," one pilot said.

"This is Reidr Leader to all forces. We're withdrawing to the base perimeter. We'll be pulling out in the _Vosgulovs_ that have gotten out of port, late as it seems, and we can't stop the shuttles from launching now. We just need to hold for twenty minutes."

"Reider Two to Leader, roger," Grace replied, firing the thrusters on her mobile suit. Around her, ZAFT MS lifted into the sky, braving a few seconds of anti-air exposure, before slamming down onto the concrete flooring of the base's outskirts.

It didn't take long for the OMNI MS to arrive. Just as Grace lifted her rifle, a loud alarm blared.

"What the…" Fredric said.

The Reidr Team had only heard this alarm once before. The triple-beat of high-pitched sounds, with the last beat being drawn out and finally fading off, was a signal for "impending crash disaster", signifying direct damage to the base by non-munitions, such as a shuttle crash. If it had been a missile bombardment, it would have been different.

That alarm had only played once, and it was during a naval assault, where under the cover of aerial mobile suits like the Raider Full Spec, OMNI assault ships had rammed themselves into the shore to disgorge their mobile suits. It was a crazy tactic, but it prevented the enemy from sinking the ships; their momentum could hardly be stopped, and if they were sunk, they essentially blocked off the port from further use.

As they were, OMNI had already blocked off the port against any potential attempts to escape with the remaining _Vosgulovs_ berthed there.

Just as the first wave of OMNI naval fire support hit the base, forcing the mobile suits to duck, or risk getting destroyed, a resounding crash echoed from the port, and two _Spengler -_class assault ships crashed into the base from the sea, sending concrete chunks flying everywhere.

**CE 71 August 9th, ZAFT Carpentaria Military Complex, Carpentaria, Australia, Oceania Union**

**Morning 06 35**

The OMNI mobile suits charged in from both sides. Supported from the air with more fighters coming in from the north, the assault ships opened their bay doors and unleashed two dozen Fortrestra Duel Daggers onto the base, while the land forces advanced onto the outskirts of Carpentaria Base.

Grace immediately found herself in combat against a mobile suit; the Sword 105 Dagger lashed out with its main weapon, the anti-ship sword cleaving a massive scar through the building she was backed up against. Ramming the GINN OCHER's shoulder against the opponent, Grace let the 105 Dagger stumble backwards, before showering the mobile suit with 76mm rounds.

She was barely done with her first opponent when a GINN crashed through a building, one arm and its back thrusters missing. Coming up in a roll, the ZAFT MS faced its opponent, still hidden from Grace's sight by another structure, and fired its Cattus 500mm recoiless gun. The next second, the front of the GINN exploded, and the mangled corpse, sans most of everything above the mobile suit's waist, toppled from the force of the explosion.

Grace narrowed her eyes and put her GINN OCHER into a backwards boost as a Strike Dagger landed from a boosted jump, Gae Bolg 350mm bazooka still smoking. As though it detected her presence, it turned and fired.

The round went wide as it hit a radar tower, shattering the infrastructure of the building in one shot. Grace growled and charged the mobile suit, her GINN OCHER's thrusters at maximum burn as she closed the distance between her and the Strike Dagger within seconds.

Shield met axe as the two mobile suits made contact in close-combat; the Strike Dagger dropped its bazooka and drew its beam sabre. The pilot was too slow; Grace jammed the GINN OCHER's assault cannon in-between the two units and fired, the high-calibre rounds tearing the arm off at its joint. The Strike Dagger stumbled backwards and boosted off, but Grace braced the GINN OCHER and threw the heavy axe forward, the melee weapon slamming into the mobile suit and knocking it out of the sky.

Pouring in a few bursts of 76mm fire into the Strike Dagger, Grace retreated further into the base, watching the tactical map as OMNI MS began to converge on her location. Shaking her head to clear the pounding, she opened up a communications channel. "Reidr Two to Reidr Leader, they've breached the third line. At this rate, we're going to lose the whole base."

"Reidr Leader to Two, we'll meet up here." Alan's GuAIZ appeared from beside two buildings and joined her unit.

A sudden alarm had both of them looking skywards as an Aile 105 Dagger sped overhead, sending beam rifle shots towards them. The two ZAFT MS engaged their thrusters and skated across the ground; Alan's GuAIZ aimed upwards, and shot out an arrestor.

The grappling device smashed into the shield of the Aile Dagger, throwing it off-course, as Grace fired with her GINN OCHER's assault cannon. Hemmed in from both sides, the second arrestor of the GuAIZ shot out and smashed into the 105 Dagger, pulling it towards the ZAFT unit; the GuAIZ arched its arm back and punched forward with all its might, the beam claws of the composite shield striking through the OMNI MS.

Letting the silenced 105 Dagger crumple to the ground, Alan's GuAIZ looked towards the shore. "There's no point in holding this location. Most of the ZAFT MS forces are already in retreat heading to Mornington Island. That was probably where the OMNI naval force came from."

"How did they break through?" Grace asked, keying in commands on the personnel list. Already the pictures of a good 40% of the ZAFT pilots that were active on the field were displayed in greyscale, with the words [KIA] marked beside them.

"They sacrificed most of the aquatic forces to tie up the OMNI fleet." Alan replied. "Right now they're still engaged in combat, but they won't be able to hold out for long."

Both the GuAIZ and GINN OCHER engaged their thrusters and sped out of cover, towards the west of the base. Alarms rang almost immediately; Grace bit back the urge to curse loudly as missiles homed in on their location, Spearhead fighters chasing them from ahead.

A burst of fire shredded two of the fighters on the front as a DINN emerged from cover. Shotgun shells filled the next fighter with holes, and the remaining fighters veered away as the DINN released its rocket payload at them.

"Thanks for the assist," Grace said, as the DINN engaged low-level flight, and fell in alongside them.

"I should thank you both for clearing out the ground MS in this region," the pilot replied. "In-between them and the anti-air, I wasn't sure that the DINN could withstand prolonged combat."

Grace never got her chance to reply; a Buster Dagger stepped out of cover in front of the trio and fired its gun launcher once. The DINN shuddered as it ran into a storm of armour-piercing shells head-on, before crashing into the concrete.

Alan's GuAIZ stumbled, smoke emerging from its thrusters, and Grace's GINN OCHER slowed down; both units were more heavily armoured, but that didn't make them invincible. "Reidr Leader!"

"I'm fine!" Alan said, manoeuvring the GuAIZ behind a building. Most of the unit was unharmed, but the titanium self-forging rounds fired by the Buster Dagger's gun launcher had penetrated the secondary thrusters and some parts of the torso.

Grace's GINN OCHER hid itself behind a building opposite Alan's and watched as three Strike Daggers stepped out, effectively blockading them. "Shit," Grace muttered. On the tactical map, other OMNI units were moving in from the rear; not that Grace could fight them effectively, what with being boxed in and all.

Grace checked her weapons. Apart from the 76mm assault cannon, she still had one heavy sword left. If she used the layout of the base to rush the opponents, she could at least take one down and let Alan escape-

"Reidr Two!" Alan's shout cut into her thoughts. "Above!"

The Strike Dagger above her had finished its boosted jump, and with a beam sabre held in its hand it began to descend. Grace aimed upwards, but a grenade shot flew downwards and into the GINN OCHER, exploding mere centimetres from the mobile suit. The impact forced the mobile suit to its knee, and the mangled 76mm assault cannon clattered to the ground.

Alan raised his GuAIZ's rifle, but another contact alarm from behind forced him to turn. "Shit!"

Grace gritted her teeth, narrowed her eyes, and loosened the GINN OCHER's controls. Falling into a sitting position, the scant distance gained allowed Grace to react, grabbing the Strike Dagger's sword arm.

"Don't screw with me," Grace hissed, the GINN OCHER unclipping its heavy sword from its second holster. "Get the hell out of my face!"

The GINN OCHER burned its frontal thrusters for a moment, pulling the Strike Dagger downwards as the ZAFT mobile suit fell backwards. At the same time it thrust the heavy sword upwards, and the solid weapon sheared through armour to burst out from behind the Strike Dagger.

Shoving the silent mobile suit off her, Grace stood up. "We're already within their engagement range. I will initiate an attack on the blockade in front to open up a hole. Once there is a path, please disengage from the rear enemy units and follow through."

"Belay last order, Reidr Two!" Alan said. The GuAIZ moved to peer over the cover of the building and was rewarded with a flurry of beam shots. "They have other troops covering the base outskirts; there's no way you can just waltz in from their side!"

The thrusters on Grace's unit fired. "I haven't gone through all this just to die in a suicide attack." The GINN OCHER crouched and jumped, the force propelling the mobile suit into the air. "_We_ haven't gone through all that just to die here!"

She saw it, the Buster Dagger and its Strike Dagger escorts. No doubt this scene would be of great laughter value to the next batch of pilot cadets, a single mobile suit rushing into a storm of beam fire.

Grace pushed the GINN OCHER further, squeezing every last drop of power out of its thrusters. The Buster Dagger turned to aim at the incoming target, but Grace came in too fast; with just enough time to realign the mobile suit, the GINN OCHER closed the distance, shoving a Strike Dagger aside with its free arm. This close, Grace could see the individual glass panels of the Buster Dagger's sensor units that were under its visor.

_ I didn't survive Victoria twice just to die here!_

The GINN OCHER brought its sword down in a heavy chopping motion, and the Buster Dagger, rather than try to draw its beam saber, answered by moving its 94mm beam rifle in front of it. Rather than holding it out in a textbook block, the rifle was held slanted, and the heavy sword slid along the gun's surface, scraping off components the entire way.

The pilot brought the Buster Dagger's gun launcher to bear, but Grace clenched her teeth, and the GINN OCHER reached out to grab the weapon, pulling both mobile suits close. The ZAFT unit tucked the gun launcher barrel under its arm and stuck a foot in-between the Buster Dagger's stance, before tripping it up from behind with a jerk.

All that was left was for Grace to let them both fall forward, and the GINN OCHER stabbed with all its force towards the Buster Dagger's cockpit.

The closest Strike Dagger was almost upon her when Grace, pushing the GINN OCHER's joint actuators to the limit, pulled the sword out from the side of the mobile suit; grabbing the battered 94mm beam rifle of the Buster Dagger, she threw it at the Strike Dagger and charged. The GINN OCHER slammed headfirst into the lighter OMNI unit as it batted the wreckage to one side, snapping what remained of its headfin in the process, before landing in a half-crouching pose. Bringing the sword upwards in a diagonal slash, the impact knocked the gun barrel of a third Strike Dagger off-course, and it discharged its beam into the sky.

Leg thrusters redlining, the GINN OCHER rushed forward and slid its sword into the torso of the Strike Dagger. Using the momentum of the boost, Grace moved the GINN OCHER to grab onto the falling Strike Dagger to use it as an impromptu brace; the GINN OCHER changed directions and rushed towards the second Strike Dagger, which was manoeuvring to get a clear shot at her. Shots from the first and farthest Strike Dagger went wide as Grace threw the third Strike Dagger forward. The second Strike Dagger moved to avoid getting entangled, only for Grace to impale it moments later.

A beam shot from the side destroyed the last Strike Dagger's rifle, and it hid behind its shield, drawing its beam sabre. "Reidr Leader to Reidr Two, excellent work! Let's bail!"

Grace felt as though Alan's voice had come from far away; she hadn't noticed it before, but her head had been filled with a loud roar that blocked out everything else. Right now, the only things occupying her mind was the sword that her GINN OCHER held, and the Strike Dagger in front of her.

So much that she did not see the storm of debris and dust that suddenly crashed in from the side, and the GINN with a smoking hole in its torso that toppled out of it until all was silent.

Then, as though sensing what was to come, Grace roared and sent the GINN OCHER's heavy sword swinging at the dust cloud.

**CE 71 August 9th, ZAFT Carpentaria Military Complex, Carpentaria, Australia, Oceania Union**

**Morning 07 43**

Guy Leon pushed his mobile suit forward, rushing through the dust cloud that had formed when his 350mm hyper bazooka had struck the GINN dead center. The mobile suit had been blown through the small building; Guy had to confirm the kill before he was sure the GINN wouldn't return to stab him in the back.

What he did not expect to see was the edge of a heavy sword being swung at him. Ducking, the Strike Dagger narrowly avoided being spitted as it rolled with the impact and came up, bazooka abandoned and beam rifle at the ready.

A GINN OCHER and a GuAIZ stood at ready over the bodies of a GINN, two Strike Daggers, and a Buster Dagger; he recognized the latter two as Spike Squadron members, and choked back the urge to gasp at what seemed to be solid sword wounds on all units. "This…"

A transmission came in from the last Strike Dagger. "Spike Four to Hunter Two, watch out! These guys are-"

Without pause, the GINN OCHER charged him, sword swinging. Blocking the sword with the Strike Dagger's shield, he braced against the heavy blow and pushed backwards with all his might. The 350mm bazzok struck the ground, Guy dropping the heavy weapon in favour of his beam sabre. "Hunter Two to Spike Four-"

The Strike Dagger behind him was already gone, the GuAIZ pushed it off its beam claws. Eyes wide in shock, Guy disengaged from the block as the GuAIZ charged and swiped at his Strike Dagger with its claws.

"Hunter Two!" Sarah shouted, the first of the rest of the team to emerge from the same spot Guy had gone through. "Fall back, we'll take them out from here!"

Guy could see the GINN OCHER turn to face the newcomers. "Shit!"

The Strike Daggers of Second Team had barely made it out of the opening in-between buildings when the GINN OCHER struck; Sarah's Strike Dagger was knocked to the ground as Guy threw his unit in-between the GINN OCHER and Sarah's Strike Dagger. Barely withstanding the impact, the joints on Guy's Strike Dagger sprayed sparks and electrical arcs; it took everything he could to stand his ground.

Quick like a cobra, the GINN OCHER withdrew its sword and lashed out again; this time, Guy couldn't deflect the blow fully, and the heavy sword cut into the left side of the Strike Dagger. Guy drew back his machine's sword arm, but the ZAFT MS withdrew its sword without pause and backhanded Guy's unit with its free arm, stopping his planned counter-slash before he even began.

Vision shaking from having been thrown to the ground, Guy looked upwards to see the GINN OCHER lift its heavy sword above and prepare to stab him; his other team members were getting smacked around by the GuAIZ, which was effortlessly repelling all attempts to attack it.

Guy's Strike Dagger put its left arm forward as the sword came down. Deflecting the blow at the last moment, the heavy melee weapon stuck into the concrete with a heart-stopping _krak_, right next to the Strike Dagger's torso, and parallel to the mobile suit's cockpit.

The GINN OCHER simply lifted lopped off the Strike Dagger's arm, raised its sword again, and was about to bring it down when a blur slammed the ZAFT mobile suit off Guy's battered unit. Royston Kerulean's 105 Dagger, armed with a Sword Striker, had its anti-ship sword against the GINN OCHER's much-abused blade.

The GINN OCHER, however, seemed to have lost its blood thirst; kicking off from the 105 Dagger, its boosters engaged, and with the GuAIZ covering their rear with beam rifle fire, both units vanished into the thick smoke hanging over Carpentaria.

"Hunter Leader to Hunter Two. You okay?"

Guy let out the breath he had been holding. His entire body felt sore, but then again, he thanked his lucky stars that he hadn't suffered any major injuries, or worse. "Still holding. What's going on around?"

"ZAFT is in full retreat," Royston said, returning the anti-ship sword to its back holster. All around, OMNI mobile suits landed, and the entire _Titan Hunters_ Squadron was gathered. "We've been pushing them from the base where we can find them, and I headed here on reports on some berserker GINN OCHER slaying our troops left and right."

Guy knew that Royston had been a close-combat instructor in the commando corps before he was assigned to the first MS instructor teams, created to fill OMNI's ranks with capable pilots. Almost every close-combat move Guy had learnt had come from this man currently standing in front of him; he could only imagine how the reports of someone in a first-model GINN defeating more advanced OMNI troops effortlessly could be somewhat of interest to the old man.

"The Butcher of Carpentaria seems like a fitting name…" Royston said, the barely-controlled grin on his face unseen by his subordinates, his mumblings unheard by the now-closed comms channel. "Maybe in Kaohsiung, eh? Heh heh heh…"

Closing his eyes for a moment, Royston directed his attention to Guy. "Take your team to the rear. There's no need for firepower now, so your repairs can come first. I don't you're in any condition to take on enemies anyways."

Guy checked his systems. The Strike Dagger could still walk, but he'd be of no use to the pursuit teams this way. "Roger that. All Second Team, report. Hunter Two to Hunter Ten, can you still walk?"

Morrison and Michelle's acknowledgement lights winked on. "Y-yeah…" Sarah replied, her voice wavering. "Everything checks out here."

"We're returning to the rear. Another team can take our place." Guy said, moving his Strike Dagger back up.

"Roger. And, uh…" Sarah dithered. "Thanks for the save."

Guy was silent as he glanced at the photo of his family. Settling back into his chair, he let the mobile suit engage its automatic walking sequence as the undamaged Strike Daggers of Second Team flanked the two battered units retreating to the rear lines.

"Mm." He finally said.

**CE 71 August 10th, _Vosgulov_-class submarine** _Tora_,** Arafura Sea heading into the Ceram Sea, offshore the Molucca Islands, Indonesia, Equatorial Union**

**Afternoon 11 34**

Grace Sakerfield awoke, the dim lightings of her own bunk greeting her. A splitting headache accompanied her awakening, and groaning, she reached for the pills beside her.

It had been a debilitating weakness of hers. Sometimes she wondered if her parents hadn't paid the doctor enough, and in a moment of spite for money he had deliberately made her genetic sequence produce this kind of berserker's brain. First at Yggdrasil, and several instances throughout ZAFT's Earthbound Campaign, and the most recent one being this.

Grace wasn't a stranger to war by any means, and since she moved to the PLANTs doctors have told her that the imbalance in her psyche was only for her; as a first-generation Coordinator, any potential children she would bear would be spared her untimely blankouts. But her performance at Carpentaria had been the most violent thus far, so much that as she had shambled into this temporary bunk section, set aside for pilots of the delaying forces that had managed to make it out of there alive, she had heard snippets of what the soldiers were now calling her.

The Butcher of Carpentaria.

Grace gave a soft snort as she collapsed back onto the bed, ignoring the fact that most of the sheets were damp with her sweat.

That was a tasteless name if she ever wanted one.

After the hasty retreat from Carpentaria, Grace and Alex had continued the journey on foot and thruster, running their MSes to the limit to prevent them from catching up. In the end, it was Fredric Koherng who had found them, and as Alex self-destructed his GuAIZ to prevent the enemy from finding a usable model, the three of them had made it to shore, where two hidden ZAFT submarines had surface crew scouring the shore with motorboats. Hiding from OMNI patrols had taken longer, and it wasn't until last midnight when they had finally made it out of the conflict zone.

Most of the forces strung in front of OMNI were gone, having been trapped and killed, or struck down while trying to escape. So were their aquatic forces, which had sacrificed all they could to get the submarines out; in the end, only two GoOHNs had escaped the deadly net of warships and underwater MS that OMNI had cast for them. And after the third shuttle was shot down, ZAFT hadn't been able to get any friendly forces out from the base.

Just thinking about it made her blood boil; her vision began to sharpen, her hearing began to pick up things like the background humming customary of submarines, and even her perception of time seemed to slow.

But with the absence of a battlefield, without an enemy to direct her thoughts towards, Grace could only clench her bed sheets to alleviate her condition.

_**Afterword: **__Eh, not really much in the way of afterwords these days. By this point the anime is so far up in space I don't think anyone remembers Carpentaria and Kaohsiung anymore, so I put in a few familiar names to see how far they have come throughout the war. _

_The Battle of Carpentaria, or Operation 8.8 to OMNI, is the military operation to take ZAFT's Carpentaria Base. Since there's very little exposition here apart from a line from the now-defunct Gundam Official website on an Ayers Rock Drop Operation there hasn't been much to work with. That's good, however, since I can move the battle around as I like. I hope there isn't any oversight in strategy in this one... It's head-spinning having to coordinate both sides and make sure there're no major discrepancies in the strategies used by either._


	18. Chapter 18: Implications

_**Author's Note:**_

_This fanfic is to write upon some of the events in Gundam SEED and SEED Destiny that are not touched upon or mentioned in-series, but their dates are listed on GundamWikia and are thus treated as part of canon. They are therefore based upon actual happenings in the Cosmic Era universe, but the events within them are open to interpretation. This fanfic is also an attempt at showcasing a "what-if" of all sides involved in the wars, and how some of the events within the show might have come to be._

**Gundam SEED: Tales of the Cosmic Era**

**Chapter 18: Implications**

**CE 71 May 9th, fishing boat **_**Luck of One**_**, Bering Sea, 11.34 kilometres from JOSH-A**

**Evening 17 54**

"Any luck?" The man asked as the small motorboat pulled up beside the larger trawler.

"None at all," Richard Camelot replied. "We couldn't get in to the base itself since everything from the entrance onwards had collapsed, but we'd never thought even those outside got it that bad."

"How bad?" the man asked, pulling the boat close.

Richard let the hulls of the two craft knock against each other before taking the steel hook that the man offered to him, and attached it to the prow of the motorboat. Behind him, another man did the same, and the trawler's winches began to roll as it retrieved its load; a team of six field doctors from a non-government organization.

"Terrible," one of the doctors replied. "This… I've heard that OMNI has a weapon more terrible than nuclear weapons, but all those men and women…"

Another doctor clasped her shaking hands. "When we heard reports from the locals about the sudden source of light in the area, we thought it had been a power plant incident gone wrong. You know what it's like on the Eurasian Front, at this point everyone is holding out on the Saragossa Defence Line, and OMNI had relaxed the rules for civilian organizations to pitch in."

She took another breath before continuing. "So we headed here. We had finished our refresher courses and were going to leave for the UK soon enough anyways, but we thought we could help with whatever they need. After all, the locals described it as a really massive phenomenon…"

At this point she fell silent. Richard, suppressing the urge to sigh, took over. "We're all civilians here, and these guys just finished their medic training. I thought it would be a good idea for them to get used to what it's like being a medic in an NGO, so I let them go. In retrospect, I should have brought scoops and pails instead of my medical kit."

The man working the winch gave an incredulous look at Richard. "Scoops and pails?"

Richard set a hand on the man's shoulder. "Let's just leave it at that and head back. I bet your captain is tired of waiting out in the middle of nowhere."

The man glanced at the shambling team of new civilian medics, and the well-built man with an obscure look in his eyes. "Sounds good to me," he said, securing the lightweight motorboat to the side winch on the deck of the trawler.

Richard stayed on deck and watched the lights from the ship's lamps reflect off the dark waters. The new medics had already began to file below-decks to rest in the ship's lounge; Richard couldn't blame them, since even he was caught off-guard by the sheer violence of the scenes at JOSH-A. It had reached the point where OMNI didn't even bother securing the area from letting civilians in; either OMNI didn't have the manpower left, or they didn't think that there was much left besides a crater.

Either way, the Atlantic Federation would do something about it, so Richard had opted to get out as fast as he could. It was evident that there was nothing left to save there, and he didn't want to run the risk of getting tangled by the Atlantic security forces. It was a sad era, one where civilian organizations responded faster to a crisis than a government could.

Richard squinted as a suspicious object broke the otherwise smooth surfaces of the waves. Making his way to the bridge, he told the captain to stop.

By the time he returned to the deck, the captain had called on two more people and hailed the navigator to take them as close as they could. Richard found the angular disturbance oddly familiar, but it wasn't until the two men hauled the load onboard that Richard realized the prize that was fished up.

"A ZAFT pilot!" One of the men exclaimed, looking at the helmeted, vaguely-feminine form that lay on the deck. The air floats on the pilot suit had been activated; positioned around the shoulders; they had helped keep naval pilots afloat in the event that one had to abandon their mobile suit. Richard had seen it once or twice during his previous trips to the European front.

"This looks bad," the captain said, squatting down to take a good look. "I may be a fisherman, but I know material burn-related injuries when I see them."

Richard had already rolled up his sleeves. "Yeah," he said, walking towards the below-decks lounge. "But something tells me she can still be saved. While I see if I can alleviate her condition, I need you to move to St. Lawrence's Island."

The captain motioned for one of his men to notify the navigator immediately. "Wouldn't Alaska be better though?"

"We can use the meteorological station's facilities there," Richard replied. "The place was an old military base that got bought over by an old semi-civilian research group, and I know some of them well enough. Besides, if we pulled into Alaska… well, I don't want a war crime to be committed on your ship by a handful of trigger-happy port security types."

**CE 71 May 9th, fishing boat **_**Luck of One**_**, Bering Sea, 166 kilometres from JOSH-A**

**Night 20 46**

Richard leaned against the ship's deck railings, breathing in the cool night air. The medical team had spend nearly three hours separating the ZAFT pilot's half-melted pilot suit and inner material layer from her skin; it had been a tedious process, but the fact that they had found her so far away from the epicentre of the blast meant that her burns were not that serious.

What was on Richard's mind, however, was the patient's coma state. Without equipment on hand, he couldn't tell what was wrong. The physical signs of any spinal or bone injuries weren't there, but the wounds had been terrible, and the patient's eyes were almost unresponsive to bright light. It was a wonder that he could feel a pulse at all.

He had already contacted his friends in the meteorological station; they had prepared the necessary facilities, and would be able to treat her better than he could with what he had on hand.

The moment the boat reached the docks, Richard and his crew rushed the patient out on a stretcher. The night was cold, and all they had done on the ship was to dry her, cut off any dangling scraps and wrapped her in as many blankets as they could find. It was another four hours in the facility as Richard and the medical team tried to separate human flesh from composite fabric, and another two hours before they could call her condition stabilized.

Despite the late hours, by the next morning Richard was already up and around, making sure the patient was still alive. Now that day had cast its light on the island, he realized that the ZAFT pilot bore a great deal of resemblance to his niece, whom was currently staying in Lerwick of the UK.

He touched the edges of the pale blonde hair that ended just above the pilot's shoulders. From her appearance Richard guessed that she couldn't be more than seventeen, at least two years younger than his niece, and yet she served as a pilot in ZAFT… and was found at such a place that had witnessed unspeakable slaughter.

"You're an early one," the doctor said, stepping into the room with a clipboard in hand.

"'Morning, Viktor. Being on the Saragossa Absolute Defence Line for a good five months will tend to lock your sleep patterns," Richard said. "I was supposed to head back in two days time, but…"

Viktor checked the patient's vitals, clicking his tongue as he jotted down the readings. "Sounds tough being an NGO medic and doctor," he said. "How are things on the Eurasian front?"

"All things considered, not bad, I guess," Richard said. "ZAFT didn't seem to be interested in pushing to OMNI HQ in Geneva prior to my departure. I guess Victoria was where they were prioritizing. ZAFT's initial push towards central Europe still left a lot of devastation in their wake though. Even with the Eurasian Federation clustering half of what remains of their army down at Spain, they still can't get more than a foot through the doorway; ZAFT's active air defence and mobile reaction forces are just too tight for them to try anything major."

Richard stepped away to pull back the curtains, letting the morning light through. "As a result, the people trapped in-between the two armies aren't getting by well at all. The Eurasian forces can't move beyond the Defence Line without ZAFT scrambling an air wing after their asses, and ZAFT itself refuses to pull back their defence systems; they've hidden SAM sites all over the place up to as far as Catalayud. It's like they're purposely trying to wear down their opposing side's patience into trying something stupid. That just leaves it up to us NGOs to do something, and there's a limit to what we can do."

"Such is war, isn't it?" Viktor remarked. "We have a more pressing matter on hand, though."

"I know," Richard said. "We can't keep her here forever."

"Maybe, but not quite," Viktor replied. "No one here is interested in the ZAFT pilot as a potential trade; currying favour with the Atlantic Federation is not as easy as they make it out to be. If we suddenly procure a Coordinator, considering our position in the middle of nowhere, it's more likely that we'll get charged by their intelligence services for harbouring the enemy than any other reason. We still have other people coming in occasionally though, mostly suppliers and maybe a government official or two, and some of the crew are worried she might be one of the more… "racially-judgmental" Coordinators."

Richard arched an eyebrow. "Elaborate."

"Do not feign, Richard," Viktor replied. "You know your credentials; an NGO medic and doctor who's seen action in the most current warzone, specializing in acute injury treatment, rehabilitation, and psychology. I was a former combat medic, and later a doctor in the Eurasian military during the Balkans uprising. You and I both know that soldiers knocked out in traumatic experiences are bound to wake up angry, confused, and looking for a reason to unleash their paranoia. I do not want one of my attendants to walk in one day and become another number," he pointed a thumb at the comatose pilot "On her personal statistic.

"That seems like a very extreme situation." Richard replied.

"Perhaps, but we found traces of IK-377 and R-Two-50 in her bloodstream yesterday night," Viktor replied. "Those are steroids so strong that they are only issued to military special ops, and they are only effective when used in the heat of combat. The drugs, on a normal dose, last without reduction in effects for up to thirty-six hours and take a further twenty-two hours…"

"To be discharged from the body system," Richard cut in. "While they improve physical performance and reaction time by double-digit percentages, an unheard-off number in the field of booster drugs, they also cause increased aggression, more reliance on the brain's subconscious and natural instincts, and heavily-afflicted patients often exhibit superhuman strength and extreme violence without target differentiation."

He glanced at the patient. "You're worried she might tear her own body apart when she wakes?"

"Given how she has almost six times the normal amount of both drugs in her system, all of them with the same decay time pattern, it must have been one hell of a situation for her to have taken that dose at once. The analysis places the time of drug ingestion on the 8th of May within a 16-hour period." Viktor shrugged. "But she will not wake up that quickly. It is her psyche I am worried about."

Richard thought back to the news he had received about a bright light swallowing that portion of Alaska, the sudden disappearance of an entire military base, and what few bodies they could find reduced to nothing more than red smears and scattered bones on the land. "A valid concern. Still, we can't afford to move her."

Viktor waved his hand dismissively as he turned to walk out of the sickbay. "I know. I'm short of hands, as you already experienced last night. I would be grateful if you could use her as an excuse to stay here."

"I don't mind," Richard said. "Don't you guys run on a tight supply schedule though? You're not under full government backing after all."

Viktor grinned as he left the room. "I was hoping your hobby in fishing would make up for that."

**CE 71 June 8th, St. Lawrence's Island, Bering Sea**

**Afternoon 15 56**

Spending a month on an island completely out of place, Richard realized, wasn't so bad.

While the meteorological facility was bare-bones, it was a peaceful life. Having spent months on the Saragossa Absolute Defence Line, the tranquillity of the place, compared to the chaotic frontline, had been a welcome contrast. He hadn't relished going back at all, but now he wondered if he would be able to muster enough willpower to return to being an NGO field medic after living here for a month; from the e-mails he got from his friends, things were a frenzy up front, with the Eurasian Federation preparing a counterattack and probing the ZAFT line at Saragossa almost on a daily basis. Part of him thanked his luck that he wasn't there at the moment.

He had monitored the patient's daily progress, moving her arms and legs to prevent them from getting atrophied, and changing her position from lying down to sitting every half a day or so. Her scars were beginning to disappear, the white patches of her skin slowly changing colour to match her natural skin tone. Even as a doctor, he marvelled at the improved healing capabilities exhibited by Coordinators; scars would be left, but they were burns, not deep cuts, and with the passage of time, the scars, too, would disappear.

Truth be told, the ZAFT pilot hadn't been very tanned herself. Her skin would return to its normal coloration within a few weeks if the healing rate kept up.

If there was one thing Richard noticed about this out-of-the-way survey station, it was the number of people staffing it. Not counting Viktor and himself, there were barely twenty people in this place. A small town was located on the other side of the island, and someone from the station would visit the town once a week to receive offloaded supplies. Compared to the outside world, Richard was willing to bet that he could hide a hundred Coordinators here without much trouble.

He had taken the trouble to sift through the tattered remains of the ZAFT pilot's pilot suit, to no avail. For a month, Richard wondered about her name, her origins, and her past. With nothing to occupy his mind, he was surprised at some of the scenarios he had thought up.

His peace was shattered on this day, roughly a month after he brought the Coordinator to the island.

"Come quickly," Viktor had said over the phone. "She's already injured the only medical orderly we have in this place."

Richard had been close by; as soon as he entered the room, he was rewarded with Viktor slamming into him. Shoving his fellow doctor off him, Richard braced himself as he took in the sights; a syringe jammed into the orderly's arms, the skinny man rubbing his chin as he stood up shakily, only to collapse against the wall, his legs weak from the chin strike he received.

"Shite," Richard said. "Calm down, miss, this isn't an OMNI facility."

The ZAFT pilot fixed him with a death glare. "Fuck off," she rasped. "I'll believe it when I see the sign of ZAFT all over the walls of this place, wherever it is."

"You're on a meteorological survey station," Viktor replied.

"On St. Lawrence's Island," Richard added, ignoring Viktor's look of horror.

The ZAFT pilot recoiled when Richard mentioned the location's name. "Within spitting distance of Alaska, and you tell me this place isn't affiliated with OMNI?!" She pulled the IV needle from her wrist, ignoring the blood flowing down her arm.

Viktor's eyes narrowed as she stumbled forward unsteadily. "This isn't supposed to happen. She should have nothing in her body that could give her that much strength after a month in a coma."

"They're Coordinators," Richard replied. "Biological optimization of resources, the whole magical package."

"This isn't about genes, Richard, this is about biology and physics." Viktor said, as both men took a step backwards, away from the ZAFT pilot, who had gotten hold of the metal stand on which hung a packet of saline solution. "Coordinators will suffer the same muscle atrophy of Naturals without exercise. Even if you've been adjusting her limbs daily, there's no way she could muster enough strength to incapacitate someone in one strike. Jake may be a bit skinny for an orderly, but he's still trained in restraining patients."

Richard pondered the facts. "And she threw you."

"Exactly," Viktor said. "Combat medics are even less of a pushover than the people they support."

The ZAFT pilot took one last unsteady step forward before she crashed to the floor, her energy finally out. Richard carried her unconscious form and set her back on the bed. "You think the drugs were modified by ZAFT in ways that we have yet to learn how to detect for?"

"Perhaps. If their soldiers had to take combat drugs before an operation, that means that the risk of getting captured or stranded was imminent." Viktor staunched the needle wound on her wrist, and prepared to re-insert the IV needle on her other arm. "Perhaps they wanted their pilots ready to break out the moment they were awake, and tweaked the drug composition to either make it last longer... or even lace it with nanomachines that could preserve the drug enzymes as long as the pilots were asleep."

"Is there a dialysis machine here?" Richard asked.

"Unfortunately not," Viktor said. "We're going to have to restrain her."

"No," Richard said. "Let her be. I'll handle this."

**CE 71 June 10th, St. Lawrence's Island, Bering Sea**

**Morning 09 12**

It took another day before the patient awoke. Richard could almost replay the sequence, frame for frame, of what happened in the morning; the patient had slowly opened her eyes, and as she looked around the room, her eyes widened in shock.

Richard had kept telling himself to be prepared for such an event, but nothing could prepare him for the speed at which the Coordinator lunged for him, a snarl escaping her cracked lips. Her fingers closed like an iron vice around his am, and even for a man with muscle, Richard felt the pressure and sharp pain of the grip all the way to his bone. The memories and hidden implications of what a Coordinator could do to break his bones in numerous different ways flashed through his mind.

It was therefore lucky for him that the atrophy of muscles was a physical constant, regardless of whether one was a Natural or Coordinator. Even with her paranoia, drug-fuelled strength, and Coordinator constitution, the ZAFT pilot was no match for Richard as he drew back in surprise, and the patient was pulled from her bed.

It was only a last-minute catch by her shoulder that Richard narrowly avoided putting the ZAFT pilot back into bed with a floor-based, concussion-induced coma. One firm hand on her shoulder, Richard forced her back into a sitting position on the edge of the hospital bed. "Calm down!"

"Let go of me, asshole!" She struggled to free her shoulder from his grip, her free hand prying at his fingers. "You'll never get a single thing out of me."

"If I were an OMNI agent, I would have you strapped down on a vertical board, doused you with freezing water, before injecting you with a blood agent that would increase your blood circulation by a huge percentage, all the better to mess with your body and mind," Richard said, his voice rising. "Now _calm down _so I can let go of you!"

The ZAFT pilot finally stopped struggling, easing her grip off Richard's wrist. He immediately drew back and rubbed his forearm; the Coordinator had gripped it so hard the flesh had turned white. "Well? Have you calmed down yet?"

The ZAFT pilot eyed him with a glare. "So where is this place?"

"St. Lawrences' Island," Richard replied. "On a privately-funded meteorological station located in the centre of the island."

"That doesn't tell me anything," the ZFT pilot said.

"I was hoping you would be the one asking questions," Richard said. "It would make it easier to balance things out."

The follow-up was almost immediate. "What happened at JOSH-A?"

Richard balked. "That's a tough question. I was hoping you'll be the one to tell me that once you're feeling good enough," Richard said. "If it brings up a memory, you were found offshore Alaska, JOSH-A. Or what used to be JOSH-A. All that's left is rubble and a crater in its center."

The ZAFT pilot's face twisted into a frown as she closed her eyes. A few seconds later she brought her hands to her temples. "… I can't remember anything."

"Not surprising, considering what's left of JOSH-A," Richard muttered.

"And… my comrades?" the ZAFT pilot turned to look at Richard."Did you find anyone else?"

Richard shook his head. "I saw no one else."

The ZAFT pilot let her head drop, the fire gone from her eyes. "Dammit," she clenched the bedsheets, tears dropping from her eyes. "Dammit!"

Richard waited until the ZAFT pilot had composed herself. "So what's the date today?"

"10th of June," Richard replied. "Slightly over a month since you were found."

"That long…" the ZAFT pilot mumbled. "What happened outside? What happened after JOSH-A?"

Richard filled her in on the events that were reported in the news, from the silence of the news on JOSH-A, to the ZAFT victory at Panama, and the most recent event, OMNI's threats against the remaining free nations of the world.

The ZAFT pilot let herself relax onto the bed as she stared out of the open window. "It seems like I missed out on a lot." She set a hand on the bed and attempted to push herself off, rising unsteadily to her feet. "I… I need to go."

Richard set his hands on her shoulders and set her back down on the bed. "You're not going anywhere."

"I can't stay here, I'm a ZAFT soldier!" She struggled to escape Richard's grasp. "I have to be back on the front!"

"You won't be in any condition to pilot a mobile suit, you can barely stand!" Richard said. "Even if you could, how would you risk moving over an entire ocean to reach the closest ZAFT base that would take you in?"

"I don't need a Natural to tell me what my body condition is," the pilot snarled. "And if you're going to leak my identity, you better be prepared for the-"

"Natural or Coordinator, both sides came from the same source," Richard answered, a tone of steel set in his voice. "I've been a medic and a doctor for more years than you've been living, miss, and if I say you're not fit for piloting a mobile suit, then you better believe what I say." He let go of the ZAFT pilot and crossed his arms. "If I had been concerned about you getting into a mobile suit, I would have had you restrained, or worse, left you floating in the Bering Sea for the fishes. If you get into a mobile suit now, you're going to shatter every bone in your body just by getting it to move."

"Coordinators are far stronger than you think," the pilot replied.

"Coordinators will become nothing more than invalids if they're left to lie for a month doing nothing," Richard said. "So long as you don't try anything funny, you can stay here for as long as you need until you recuperate."

The ZAFT pilot was silent, even when Richard left the room hours later.

**CE 71 June 15th, St. Lawrence's Island, Bering Sea**

**Afternoon 13 12**

For the next few days, Richard visited the pilot every day. Now that she was awake, occasional visits were no longer acceptable. It took an entire afternoon before Richard was able to get a name out of her; Aleiya Varchenowa.

She had been extremely quiet, barely touching the meals that the orderly had brought for her. It wasn't until Richard swallowed one of the meals in front of her and came back at dinnertime without looking any worse for the wear that she was willing to eat anything more. Her interaction with the crew of the survey station was minimal; they didn't come looking for her after her first awakening, and she made no effort to seek them out. Richard still remembered the look of relief on Jake's face when Richard told the orderly he could take over assisting Viktor with his work.

Any questions Aleiya asked had been concerning ZAFT's movements over the globe. Richard had updated her as more news came in.

On the 15th however, Richard could not find her in the sickbay. Searching high and low, he finally found her hobbling out of the station's front lobby, crutch in hand, as she made for the port.

"I guess you heard about the latest report?" He asked, moving to block her path. "Did you overhear two people talking about it as they passed by the sickbay? Or did you sneak in elsewhere to use a radio set?"

"Get out of my way," Aleiya said. "I need to get to Kaohsiung!"

"There isn't anyone here who would lend you a boat. Even if they would, you would never make it beyond Japan." Richard stopped as Aleiya continued. "There's nothing you can do about ZAFT and OMNI at Victoria. Give it up."

"And let the Naturals slaughter everyone there?!" Aleiya said, turning on Richard. Her eyes were shining as tears rolled down her face, her glare burning straight into Richard's gaze. "I remember Junius Seven! I remember Nova! I rememberd the Black Sea Skirmish, the Defence of Gibraltar, the skirmishes at the Saragossa Defence Line! I finally recalled what happened at JOSH-A!" She clenched her teeth, sucking in the cold air of the island, before continuing. "And you're asking me to just let OMNI walk all over my comrades, while I hide on an island that's on the doorstep of one of their main powers!"

Richard simply let her finish her outburst before walking forward. "Are you going to die trying, then?" He quietly asked.

Aleiya backed away from him. "Better to die trying than to never try at all," she said, keeping up her glare at him.

"Don't be stupid. This is a fool's errand."

"What would you know about a fool's errand?!" Aleiya snapped. "You're a medic! You'll save the life of an enemy, even if the enemy would stab you in the back once recovered!"

"Maybe," Richard said. "But that's my creed. Your creed is to serve ZAFT, isn't it? If you die here, it will be an even greater waste of a life than all those who died at JOSH-A and before. At least they died fighting. You? Left to drown while crossing the Pacific in a tiny boat. I'm sure your buddies would be so proud of you."

Richard kept his expression level as he delivered his statement. He was ready to physically restrain her if things got out of hand, but the instant the words were out of Richard's mouth, Aleiya looked as though someone had just slapped her. Slumping to the ground, she did not even resist once as Richard helped her back up, and supported her back into the survey station.

For the next few days, for all the interaction with the outside world she had, being in a coma would have been easier for her mind. Even the ZAFT defeat at Victoria and the subsequent Eurasian Federation offensive failed to trigger any response from her. Days passed and June came to a close, and still Aleiya remained unresponsive.

"I think you overdid things, Richard," Viktor said. "She's worst off than before… well, through no fault of your own."

Richard sighed. "Stop reminding me."

**CE 71 July 2nd, St. Lawrence's Island, Bering Sea**

**Afternoon 12 31**

Richard frowned as he watched the leader of the survey team talk to the OMNI officers. A few brisk words were exchanged, and the officers nodded before leaving. As Richard watched the military men leave in their car, he turned to face Viktor.

"What is it now? Land repossession?"

"It's land re-acquisition, or so they keep emphasizing to us," Viktor replied icily. They're going to take over this place and use it as a base for some facility of theirs. They've given us a few days to pack out personal belongings."

"What about the meteorological survey equipment?" Richard asked.

"They told us to leave it behind," Viktor spat. "Said it was part of a citizen's duty to the government."

"This place is staffed with as many people from Russia as it is from the US, not counting the other people around." Richard replied. "This is land shared by both the Eurasian and Atlantic Federation."

"Doesn't matter to them. Didn't you hear how the officers talked? They basically told us to fuck off and leave everything behind, or else they'll bring treason charges against us," Viktor said, rounding a corner so quickly he almost knocked someone else over. "OMNI has finally stooped to daylight robbery since their tangle with Orb."

"What about Aleiya?" Richard asked.

"Hopefully she stays like that for the moment," Viktor said. "If you're still intent on saving her, bring her on one of the boats headed to Japan; we have two guys headed there. Forget Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky; the Eurasian Federation's floating naval fortress _Zhuravlik_ is stationed there. As vast as Russia is, you won't be able to travel quick enough to avoid detection."

"How soon can we move?" Richard asked.

"Two week's time," Viktor replied. "It would be easier to hide her in the midst of all these people milling around. Given how the Atlantic Federation troops are, one look into her eyes would give her away."

"I'll help you pack your things until then," Richard said. "Unless all your medical tools are included in the list of things slated for 're-acquisition'…"

The next two weeks was a blur of activity as the survey crew made ready to leave their home of almost two years. Through it all, Richard noticed no change in Aleiya. Naturally, he had told her nothing off OMNI returning to this place, and saw no reason to.

Throughout the two weeks, the Atlantic Federation officers visited another two times. The last time, they had been intent on visiting the sickbay, and nothing Viktor or Richard could say managed to dissuade their minds.

Richard felt his breath stick in throat as the officers opened the door only to find nothing in the room; even the sheets had been made. The sickbay looked unoccupied.

Richard spent the next two hours looking for Aleiya, finally locating her in one of the empty rooms.

As soon as he saw her, he knew the jig was up. "So you knew."

Aleiya looked at him, her eyes unreadable. "A famous proverb in Chinese goes like this: 'The walls have ears.' There's not a shred of secrecy in here. It's easy for me to know things."

"What will you do?" Richard asked. "Run away? Plan a sneak attack on them?"

"We'll be going to Japan, right?" Aleiya said. "Whoever suggested it was a wise choice. And just in time, too."

Richard frowned. "'Just in time?' What do you mean?"

"A base is being built out here in the boondocks," Aleiya said, getting to her feet. "St. Lawrence's Island is far beyond any tactical or strategic requirements of OMNI just by its position alone. There are still many places yet where OMNI can launch an attack on Kaohsiung and retreat to without fear of retaliation." She smiled humourlessly. "With current technology, a top-notch medical facility can be set up in a matter of days, and stocked with the latest in equipment for use in all purposes."

Something in Aleiya's tone set alarm bells ringing in Richard's mind, and he swallowed once before continuing. "What are you trying to imply?"

"St. Lawrence's Island is surrounded by the ocean on all fronts, guarded by several naval bases on Sakhalin, Kamchatka, and the Japanese islands, in addition to the Seattle Naval Complex the Atlantic Federation has. Even if those fail, there are shipping lanes between the Atlantic Federation and the Republic of East Asia, patrolled by OMNI warships. With ZAFT's latest defeat, they no longer have the capability to launch strikes deep into enemy territory."

She walked up to Richard, before fixing her sight with his. "If OMNI so wished, they could build an interrogation facility right here and disguise it as some other facility. No one would know."

Aleiya let her words sink in before continuing. "They're going to turn this place into an interrogation camp for any Coordinators they capture from Kaohsiung."

**CE 71 July 22nd, 350 kilometers from Zhoushan in the East China Sea, Republic of East Asia**

**Afternoon 16 53**

Richard glanced at Aleiya, the ZAFT pilot looking out at the sea. Having stopped only once at Tokyo Bay, the pair had continued their silent journey from St. Lawrence's island towards the forefront of the war; the land of Taiwan, where ZAFT had established control over the Kaohsiung Mass Driver. Richard had overestimated the Atlantic Federation, for which he was thankful for; they barely glanced at Aleiya as she boarded one of the boats, the only change being that her hair was dyed brown to hide her most obvious Coordinator trait. The last thing he saw of the island was a large Atlantic Federation transport ship releasing several smaller boats, packed with people and containers, as they swarmed towards the islands.

Travelling for three days to Tokyo Bay, it was a stroke of luck that they found a boat that was travelling to a port in Fujian, China, with a small shipment of supplies. Apart from them, the boat was almost empty save for a handful of people.

Now, the private trawler was aiming to skirt the coast of mainland China. Looking east, Aleiya could see the wreck of Sector Babylon, the half-finished floating city that the Republic of East Asia had aimed to complete by CE 72 as part of a new commerce centre. The cries of seabirds were clear even at a distance away; the entire scene resembled the spectral, skeletal wreck of a modern city, raised from a watery grave to pockmark the surface of the ocean and the skyline with its terrible figure.

During the April Fool's Crisis caused by ZAFT's dropping of Neutron Jammers over the Earth, the four-cored nuclear reactor used to run the rapidly-growing Sector Babylon was shut down without warning. With a population of almost 60 000 people and a rapidly-diminishing fleet of electric boats and transports, none of which could be charged without a working reactor, the entire floating city had become a landscape of chaos mirroring those of other cities on dry land. As the last of the boats that could still move left for land, half-secured structures failed, plunging abandoned people and material into the depths, and for weeks Sector Babylon burned with the fires of unceasing riots.

Aleiya was no expert on foreign issues, but even within ZAFT, stories of the carnage wrought by the April Fool's Crisis were hotly-debated topics, enough that there wasn't a soldier who didn't at least know of the true scope of the major nations' degree of reliance on nuclear power. When mainland China had stabilized enough of its home affairs to come looking for survivors, there were less than 40 people out of the 53 000 left on Sector Babylon.

The trawler continued its journey, slowly bypassing the massive structure. While initially reluctant to join OMNI's cause, the massive financial losses from the companies that had set up base on Sector Babylon, combined with the widespread infrastructure damage to the Korean, Chinese and Japanese regions, were enough to push the Republic of East Asia to reverse their initial statement. Aleiya supposed that there wasn't a single nation in the world that could stomach having its upcoming attraction and economic keystones taken off the planet, without feeling the need to exact a heavy toll from the perpetrators.

"Haunting view, isn't it?" Richard said, approaching from behind. "This is my first time seeing it up close. I feel the tension in the air, but…"

"… but at the same time, the silence is calming," Aleiya finished the sentence for the NGO doctor.

"A sudden fascination with a gravestone?" Richard said.

Aleiya was silent for a moment. There was nothing in Richard's voice to suggest he had meant anything more than what was said. "Just wondering how big the price tag for this would be once the war is over. ZAFT is rich on neither empathy nor guilt. I share their sentiments most of the time."

Richard let his gaze linger over the silent monument a while more before changing the subject. "We're almost there soon," he said. "How are you planning to get into Kaohsiung?"

"Find a boat to get to Taiwanese shores, and then trek inland and hopefully towards a ZAFT garrison, maybe," Aleiya replied, pointing to her eyes. "If I press the right buttons, there's no way they can ignore my words. Once I can get in, they'll be able to affirm my identity using gene testing." She turned to glance at him. "What about you?"

"Taiwan has been ravaged by war since the start of this whole mess," Richard replied. "I guess I'll find someplace to busy myself. I know a lot of different people from different NGOs after all."

"OMNI will not just waltz in. They'll begin by shelling the region first, to flush out ZAFT positions," Aleiya replied. "Many soldiers and civilians will die before OMNI begins landing their troops."

Richard shrugged. "There are as many ways to save a person as there are to kill them." He held out a hand to Aleiya. "I wish you good luck."

Aleiya looked on in surprise at the offered hand, before returning it with a handshake. Aleiya frowned as she searched for the right words to reply with. "Same to you too."

That night, Aleiya was watching the shining moon from the deck. While the sight of the full moon was reflected off her wide-open eyes, inside, her mind was replaying a single phrase over and over again, in a voice she was all too familiar with.

_A dead man may be honourable,_ the voice said, a memory from her first major sortie against OMNI, at the asteroid station Nova, _but his name and skills are worthless to the nation if he cannot use them._

A new voice entered her thoughts. _If you die here, it will be an even greater waste of a life than all those who died at JOSH-A and before._ Aleiya set her head on her arms and leaned on the deck railing as Richard's voice mingled with the one in her memory. _At least they died fighting. You?_

The young ZAFT pilot let her gaze wander out over the sea, to where the night sky met the waterline. "Funny how they say similar things," she whispered, the night breeze swallowing her voice.

_**Afterword:**_

_Another slow one, more focused on laying the groundwork for OMNI's last Earthbound action than anything else. There isn't much to say here beyond making a few back-references to a few recent past events in this story; in the backstory, Kaohsiung wasn't even touched upon other than a footnote that says that it was relinquished to the Republic of East Asia after the war, so I hope I'll be able to provide the answer to one last question in the SEED story. _


	19. Chapter 19: Mercy

_**Author's Note:**_

_This fanfic is to write upon some of the events in Gundam SEED and SEED Destiny that are not touched upon or mentioned in-series, but their dates are listed on GundamWikia and are thus treated as part of canon. They are therefore based upon actual happenings in the Cosmic Era universe, but the events within them are open to interpretation. This fanfic is also an attempt at showcasing a "what-if" of all sides involved in the wars, and how some of the events within the show might have come to be._

**Gundam SEED: Tales of the Cosmic Era**

**Chapter 19: Mercy**

**CE 71 August 22****th****, Nanxi, Taiwan, Republic of East Asia**

**Evening 17 54**

The GINN OCHER sat, its bulky frame hidden in the forests of Taiwan, as a flight of F-7D Spearheads screamed over its position, the fighters moving west towards the Taiwanese coast as they returned to the Republic of East Asia's offshore battle fleets to refuel.

The clear skies and peaceful forests belied the situation; the vast majority of the Republic of East Asia's fleet had moved to encircle the island territory of Taiwan. The ruined city of Kaohsiung served as the testament to battles both past and present; the ZAFT forces had carved up the area when they had moved in to take the Kaohsiung Mass Driver, and now, the Republic of East Asia continued their probing attacks with commandos and specialized teams of mobile suits, forcing ZAFT to pick their fights carefully, or risk losing precious manpower in meaningless fights. Had their navy and marine forces not suffered a crippling defeat against ZAFT three months back while attempting to land at Tainan city, they would have encircled the entirety of Taiwan with impunity.

To the east, the battle fleets of the Atlantic Federation were approaching, chasing the last of ZAFT's terrestrial navy to Taiwan. Those that arrived, however, found that the west shores were far from being a safe haven; the Eurasian Federation's Fourth Fleet, sent to reinforce their Pacific Fleet Command, prowled the oceans, cruisers hunting for isolated vessels to sink. Already, three _Vozgulov_ submarines had been lost to the three-ship formations that kept a watch over the siege of Kaohsiung.

There was nowhere else left for ZAFT to run.

**CE 71 August 23****th****, Magong Forward Naval Base, Taiwan, Republic of East Asia**

**Evening 17 54**

Kaguya Sakamoto sat waiting, reading through the e-manual on the operation of the 105 Dagger. The sounds of work in the hangar was nothing to her mind; right now, her entire being was focused on the digital display, which was currently displaying the 105 Dagger with Sword Striker equipment.

"Ho, so you like swords, Captain?"

Kaguya glanced backwards to see her second-in-command, Alvan Forstner, peer over her shoulder.

"We're going to be deployed into Kaohsiung. It's only natural that I make sure I am able to requisition the right equipment."

Alvan crossed his hands, a smile on his face. "Surely you don't expect us to all be able to use such specialized sets of armaments, do you?" He pointed a thumb backwards. "What's wrong with beam sabres, anyways?"

"Nothing and everything," Kaguya replied. "While they may be fast on the draw, they lack direct stopping power. In an urban environment, where first-strike is everything, a beam sabre may seem like the weapon of choice, but sometimes, a heavy weapon can come in unexpectedly useful if you choose to launch a moving strike; the anti-ship sword doesn't produce as large a heat signature or ambient radiation as a beam sabre, to name two reasons. I don't want to leave any bases uncovered."

"No wonder you deserve the rank of captain," Alan mused. "That's a pretty unorthodox way of thinking. Usually, OMNI doctrine encourages ranged engagement."

Kaguya raised an eyebrow at Alvan's words. "Only if ZAFT lets us, Alvan."

Alvan scratched his head. "Right. I sometimes forgot where you were posted from, ma'am."

Following her joining OMNI forces bound for the Victoria Supercomplex, Kaguya was quickly assigned to one of the teams on aerial reinforcement during OMNI's daring assault on the enemy-held complex. She had taken her Strike Dagger on a wild ride through the ZAFT forces, dispatching any ZAFT units that had dared to face her in close-combat. Her Strike Dagger's well-abused frame was proof of her skills, and afterwards she had easily risen to Lieutenant, then Captain, as she fought through the Eurasian skirmishes and made her way towards the last known ZAFT hotspot; Taiwan, where the Kaohsiung Mass Driver was located.

Now, Kaguya was part of a token OMNI force sent to bolster the Republic of East Asia's attempts to take back their own Mass Driver. Despite the importance of such a mission, the bias which OMNI High command had displayed for the Third Battle of Victoria, compared to this, was a clear sign of where its priorities were being placed.

"It's not like they have plenty of those to go around," Kaguya said, shutting down the handheld manual and dusting off her uniform as she stood up. "Even with the industrial power of two super-organizations, it's still hard to make ends meet with so little."

"That's true," Alvan sighed. "Most of the material is going to the space front anyways. Sometimes I wonder if we can't just sit here and wait out the war."

"We'll be lucky if ZAFT blows up the Kaohsiung Driver in a suicide attack," Kaguya retorted. "If we're unlucky, they launch an all-out offensive against the siege forces, and move into mainland China to continue in guerrilla warfare."

Alvan winced. "I forgot about that aspect. I imagine the Republic of East Asia won't be too happy about the only nation left on Earth with its Mass Driver under enemy control."

"There are many things to consider in war; the tactical aspect is what we face everyday. The strategic aspect is what really makes or breaks a nation." Kaguya stepped out of the hangar into the evening. "Just that alone is hard enough."

Alvan sniggered. "No wonder top command has so many eggheads in one room. It must be hard trying to predict all the possible scenarios."

"Hm," Kaguya said. "How's the rest of the team doing?"

"Well enough," Alvan said. "The only ones with real trouble were Tarya and Lei Yuan. Tarya's feaver is gone; she's already out of sickbay, and the issues with Lei Yuan's Dagger have been solved."

Kaguya's reply went silent as her gaze caught sight of a squadron of jet-black 105 Daggers equipped with Aile Strikers. The twelve machines were walking into a hangar, and the setting sun casted a reddish, shining edge to their jet-black colours. "Alvan, those units… do you know anything about them?"

Alvan pondered for a while, before his eyes lit up in recognition. "Ah. You see that Eight-One-Alpha-Mike-Sierra-Charlie code on their shoulder armour? That's the markings for the 81st Autonomous Mobile Suit Group. They've got a reputation for being the best of the best… and I've heard rumours that the 81st are actually the Atlantic Federation's special forces."

"Special forces… here?" Kaguya pondered. "Kaohsiung may be a valuable target, but if they're here to prevent ZAFT from sabotaging the facilities, wouldn't infantry commandos be a better choice?"

"Hell if I know, ma'am," Alvan said, a frown creasing his features. "I haven't heard a good story about them, and one of those is that the 81st are actually the military police for OMNI and the Atlantic Federation."

Kaguya couldn't help but ponder at Alvan's words as the two walked past the 105 Daggers, the last of them vanishing into the interior of the hangar. Even as the hangar doors closed, Kaguya caught the silhouette of one of them, framed against the interior of the hangar as the lighting activated; the machine had turned around, and its glowing red eyepiece made Kaguya swallow.

**CE 71 August 23****th****, Magong Forward Naval Base, Taiwan, Republic of East Asia**

**Night 19 54**

"… And then, he says to me, 'Hey! That's mine!' And you know what I did to him?"

"What?"

Kaguya looked up in mild amusement, as the answer was lost in a torrent of raucous laughter even before she had heard it fully. Seated in a corner of one of the common rooms for the barracks on the forward base, she watched as Alvan and the other members of her squadron made merry and laughed their worries away.

Kaguya, real name Mei Kenroukuen, a Commander of the Orb Military, hadn't forgotten her original mission as an undercover pilot of the Orb Recon Brigade; to infiltrate, gather data on OMNI, and if need be, sabotage OMNI efforts if it would aid in the revival of the Orb Union. While she still couldn't forget nor forgive OMNI for razing Orb, her interactions with the soldiers who fought on the frontlines had changed her views somewhat. Most of them were in it to protect the nations and peoples of Earth, and if they weren't, they were those with a bone to pick with the Coordinators, people who had suffered, or had been affected by ZAFT's heavy-handed responses, such as the April Fool's Crisis.

To add to that, Alvan was a bit special; he had been the constant second-in-command since her second reassignment. She wasn't sure if OMNI had caught on to her status; things like those were supposed to have been prepared in advance, and even now she had never met the supposed field agent from ORB who was supposed to have been bringing her secret reports out of OMNI territory.

Despite her dark thoughts, Kaguya smiled as another wave of laughter washed over the squadron pilots. While initially hesitant to group herself amongst them, Kaguya found, sometimes with fear, sometimes with relief, that with each passing day she found herself more attached to the squadron, as though they were Orb pilots that she had served with for years.

Alvan Forstner, her second-in-command. He had followed her since her reassignment out of her battered squadron from Victoria and into the Eurasian front. She even had to entrust her back to him a few times, and the trust and comradeship had gradually come after. It was hard to mentally distance him from herself after they had saved each other so many times; a point made more difficult to accept by Kaguya, considering that Alvan was a true Atlantic Federation citizen.

Tarya Eslie, a former fighter pilot. She had endured a spinal injury early in the war and had just recently returned to serve as a pilot. Ever the life of the team, Kaguya was sure that she would become to morale booster of the squadron.

Jake Bauer and Patricia Halward; the former had been a Atlantic Federation Marine Force armour operator assigned to an allied force for the Europeans, and the latter a fresh graduate of the Eurasian Federation pilot training program. The two had been a constant since halfway through her deployment on the European front, and had followed her to the Republic of East Asia. Together with Alvan and Tarya, they were some of the longest-serving members of the squadron.

Lei Yuan, Yang Huanfu, and Zhao Hua. These three had joined the squadron at mainland China as replacements following a short battle in India against ZAFT skirmishers. Judging from the attack to take Magong and establish a forward base here, Kaguya had seen their fervour, and she was sure that it hadn't come from a misguided view on racial purity.

ZAFT's actions to take the Earth had dealt a heavy blow to the Republic of East Asia's burgeoning economy and, at a time when the supernation was attempting to modernize and revolutionize its government services with civilian support packages to bring them up to speed with the Atlantic and Eurasian Federation. The ZAFT invasion, which had resulted in precious resources to be diverted to war, and destroyed the floating city of Sector Babylon, had set them back by a decade of development. By this point, the supernation was practically chomping at the bit to return the favour twice over.

All of them, from what Kaguya had seen, were good people. And that wasn't just limited to them; the commanders of the European front, the naval captains she had seen and talked to during the chase to drive ZAFT out of the Mediterranean … they were all good people. Soldiers who served for the nation, for the people, even for themselves. Some of them hated the Coordinators for the damage done to their nations, and for their abilities, but from what Kaguya had read in ORB's reports, it was as though every Natural in OMNI was a child-eating monster and had blind hatred for the Coordinators _just because_.

Kaguya was beginning to wonder if her own nation had not been simply running its own propaganda campaign; the irony of a secret service officer questioning the under-table methods of her own nation, however, was not lost on her. Even so, the memories of OMNI's savage attack on Orb kept her from openly questioning her orders. She was determined to find the root cause of it, if only to obtain closure.

Kaguya looked up from her book as Alvan approached. "Not joining the party tonight, ma'am?"

"It's tiring enough to just watch you all," Kaguya replied. "I'm not as young as you all hopefuls."

"Impossible," Alvan said in mock surprise. "A woman that admits her age?!"

Kaguya arched an eyebrow at the statement. "Any other woman would slap you for that, Alvan, but I'll just say that compared to you all, I've seen enough of the world to want to settle down somewhere." She slid her bookmark in and closed the book. "I haven't heard of officers this young in my life until now, and the lowest recorded age was 15, at the height of the Reconstruction War. Patricia, our youngest, is just one year older than that."

"That's true," Alvan said. "I guess OMNI is just desperate to end this. I've heard rumours that the Atlantic Federation had been running pilot aptitude and screening programs for years, but it's always been with a minimum age limit of eighteen, seventeen if you count exceptions."

"And now?" Kaguya asked, keeping her tone level.

"I don't know, I'm not one of the screeners," Alvan sighed. "But my parents have told me that those government dogs have been going to public schools since the start of the Bloody Valentine War. My sister was one of those with a government letter to report for a medical check-up just recently... and she's just fourteen."

"What happened?" Kaguya continued.

Alvan shrugged. "Beats me. National orders notwithstanding, it was a recent thing. I guess I'll know soon enough."

"You could be a bit more concerned," Kaguya said. "Military education aside, that's your _sister_."

"At least she'll get a job more easily," Alvan said. "Of course, I'm pretty sure my parents will reject it. After all," he said, tapping his head, "one crazy is enough in the family."

Kaguya laughed and shook her head, and got up to join the group at the table.

**CE 71 August 25****th****, Shanhua District, Tainan City, Taiwan, Republic of East Asia**

**Morning 06 34**

The city was alight in fire, fires caused by OMNI's naval bombardment of the city. The populace had long fled the area; those who could had already headed for the northern regions.

Kaguya's 105 Dagger reached out, pulling her unit's Anti-ship Sword from the carcass of a ZAFT GINN that had crashed against a half-wrecked building. The metal hulk jerked once and slid down further, loosening a small torrent of debris onto the cracked and cratered streets.

"This is only the third patrol we've encountered since we made landing," Alvan remarked, his audio feed wavering from the proximity to an embedded jammer. "Man, I just can't think how these ZAFT guys fight."

"It's also the first patrol we've successfully struck down," Kaguya replied. "I'd say they've been doing a good job at evading us."

"New transmission from Bravo Team two blocks away," Tarya said. "They've encountered another ZAFT force."

"Roger," Kaguya said, pushing her machine into high gear. The 105 Dagger ran down the streets before rocketing into the sky, thrusters blazing as the mobile suit was carried a good two kilometres into the air.

Without a sizeable mobile suit force, and with a good portion of their armour and artillery having been assigned to other places to supplement the Eurasian Federation forces during the height of the war, the Republic of East Asia was in no condition to wage a full-blown land battle. Of all the mobile suits fighting at Kaohsiung, which amounted to no more than one hundred fifty machines, 90% of them were reinforcements from OMNI. All that the Republic of East Asia could do was use its still-strong navy and air force to hem in on Taiwan. Taking back the mass driver, however, would require much more than a head-on clash.

Right now, Kaguya's squadron and eight other units of like size were conducting a raid across the south-western coast of Taiwan. If ZAFT managed to hold against their attack, then they would postpone landing in force another day. However, if Kaguya and the others could clear the city of all patrols, then the Republic of East Asia would begin landing in force, and would start their assault on Kaohsiung within the day.

"I see them," Kaguya said, her 105 Dagger raising its Anti-ship sword over its head. The machine shifted its position, its legs pointing backwards, all thrusters flaring. With blinding speed, the 105 Dagger crashed into the midst of the ZAFT formation, four GINN OCHERS with rifles, cannons and blades equipped.

The lead GINN was turning around when Kaguya swept its anti-ship sword through its waist, the long blade cutting through the concrete of a building, even as she followed up with a horizontal upward strike that sent the GINN behind her reeling from the blow, a gash across its front. The third GINN raised its rifle only to have Kaguya fire her unit's rocket anchor, the vice-like device crushing the rifle barrel as it clamped down.

The last GINN swept in with its own heavy sword, but Kaguya braced against the blow as she stabbed the anti-ship sword into the ground, blocking off the slashing motion. Before the GINN could counter-attack, her 105 Dagger had already drawn its beam sabres, and a single stab was all she needed to silence the second GINN.

The two remaining GINNs attacked at the same time, coming in from both sides as Kaguya raced to meet them. Pulling out the 105 Dagger's anti-ship sword, she swung it one-handed, letting the heavy blade catch one of the GINNs in the head as she let go of the weapon, and followed up with the beam sabre she held in the other hand.

The third GINN fell even as the last GINN charged in; Kaguya blocked its sword blow with the extra armour that had been added onto the 105 Dagger's left shoulder as part of the Sword Striker equipment. A white-hot line decorated the front of the GINN OCHER as she slashed at the ZAFT machine, and the silenced unit fell back onto the ground, a cloud of dust forming from the impact.

Alvan's Strike Dagger rounded the corner just in time to see the last GINN fall. "Man, isn't there anything left?"

"The advantages of an aerial strike," Kaguya replied. "Remember this well."

A new transmission from Patricia interrupted them both. "Edge 5 to all Edges, I have a ZAFT medical unit retreating from the front. Do I engage?"

"Edge Leader to Edge 5, what's your range and force balance?" Kaguya asked.

"At two klicks out," Patricia said. "They have an MS escort, a CGUE. Seems like it was from the engagement that Alpha Squadron previously reported."

Kaguya pondered for a moment. "Negative, Edge-5. Keep your position."

"Feeling kind?" Alvan asked.

"Edge-5 hasn't been engaged at all in this battle. She has a knack for finding good survey spots; I'll like her to keep up that excellent over-watch rather than waste effort trying to fight people who can't even reciprocate our efforts."

"I understand," Alvan said. "So, what are your-"

"An interesting viewpoint, Captain," a voice cut in. "But one that's a blatant flouting of OMNI regulations."

Kaguya keyed in commands, trying to found the source of the unidentified transmission. "Who-"

"This is Edge-5," Patricia's voice cut in. "New message from OMNI HQ at Magong. Allied units are coming in from our lines. Five squadrons total. Their callsigns are-"

"Flogger Leader of the 81st Autonomous Mobile Suit Group, Captain, and that's all you need to know for your side," the voice interrupted again, and Kaguya saw three 105 Daggers, equipped with Aile Strikers, land behind her and Alvan's units. "I think you're a bit too confident for your own good to presume who lives and dies here, aren't you?"

"The 81st…" Alvan said. "What are you guys doing here?!"

"Battlefield enforcement, Lieutenant," another voice said, appearing on Kaguya's ID display as Flogger-2; she noted, with a degree of trepidation, that the unit had chosen to hide its ID codes and pilot visual feed; all Kaguya could see was that their callsign was "Flogger", and that the marks of the 81st were emblazoned on their machines. "The Atlantic Federation has seen enough of this self-serving human conscience bullshit. We're here to end this."

With a feeling creeping through her heart, Kaguya opened communications with Patricia. "Edge Leader to Edge-5, report status."

"Good timing, Edge Leader," Patricia's reply came, fear and confusion evident in her voice. "The reinforcement unit just massacred the entire retreating ZAFT force… and now they're telling me to power down and surrender. I-"

Kaguya swallowed. "Do as they say." Turning her attention to the Floggers, she opened a direct link to Flogger-1. "And? Are we to thoroughly disintegrate each enemy we come across?"

"If there a problem with that?" Flogger-1 asked.

"There shouldn't be!" Another voice sounded out. From high up, a third 105 Aile Dagger landed on the severed torso of the first GINN Kaguya had dispatched. Metal and concrete fragmented as the 105 Aile Dagger crushed through the GINN, thrusters smoking from a boosted jump. "Edge Leader here has no idea how to fight! Is that big sword for display only, asshole?!" The 105 Dagger lifted its foot and stomped down again, making sure to grind against the concrete for good measure. "You need to make sure that they're dead!"

"We're in the middle of an operation here!" Alvan said. "This is no time to be nitpicking on details like this!"

"Orders are absolute," Flogger-2 said. "Something this crystal-clear shouldn't even need to have been said. The more of this scum that we kill off, the better." Flogger-2's 105 Dagger pointed its beam rifle at Kaguya's unit. "Or do you not know which side you're supposed to be on?"

Kaguya was about to let loose her scathing reply when Alvan stepped in-between them. "I intercepted those orders. They're stupid."

Flogger-1's voice was low as he spat his question. "What do you mean?"

"Exactly what I mean," Alvan said. "I think those orders are stupid. So I made sure my commander didn't get a chance to see them."

"Alvan, what-" Kaguya began.

"You arrogant fuck!" Flogger-3 replied, drawing his beam sabre. The area was cast in harsh shadows as Alvan defended himself, the two mobile suits locking blades with each other. "You're saying you'll rather disobey us than get rid of the Coordinators?!"

"Alvan!" Kaguya said, her 105 Dagger drawing its anti-ship sword. "Leave him be!"

"There're too many people in this squadron who don't deserve what they're about to mete out." Alvan said on a private channel. "Better for one person to take the fall than-"

A beam rifle shot lanced out from high up, the shot boiling through the right side of Alvan's Strike Dagger. With his guard freed, Flooger-3 drew back his beam sabre and plunged it through the Strike Dagger's cockpit section, before drawing back the blade and kicking the metal corpse away. "Stupid little fucker-"

The 105 Aile Dagger buckled as the reinforced sword-head of an Anti-ship Sword crashed through the mobile suit's hip mechanisms. His view blocked, Flogger-3 had not seen Kaguya rush into combat, and the 105 Dagger collapsed heavily onto the ground, sending chunks of the road spraying everywhere. "Yooooouu!"

Kaguya was silent as her 105 Dagger raised its sword high up. But it held the weapon there, and did not move.

"Enough," Flogger-1 said. "Edge Squadron, stand down. You're under arrest according to military law for the action of treason against OMNI."

In the cockpit of her 105 Dagger, Kaguya remained silent as transmissions from the other members of her squadron came in. "This is Edge Leader to all Edge units," she said, struggling to spit out every word, her face contorted in fury. "Stand down."

"Heh. You'll soon wish you'd given us a reason to end you here, _captain_." Flogger-3 sneered. "It's about high time you idealistic fuckers understood that killing them off is the best way to get things ended."

Kaguya slumped back into her chair and spared a glance at Alvan's unit, as the Floggers hacked into her machine with override codes. "I finally found it," she whispered in the darkness of her hijacked machine. "The source of all our troubles. The part of OMNI that I should destroy." She tightened her grip on the inert controls and closed her eyes. "And I need to live to do it."

**CE 71 August 26****th****, Unknown locations**

**Time Unknown**

"How goes the restructuring of the Kaohsiung Front?"

"Moving well. We made it in time to pull back our forces from facing against ZAFT's main group. It took some time, but thanks to the 81st and their special authority, we've managed to pull quite a bit of people from the Republic of East Asia."

"Even if we use this method, retraining them will not be easy."

"Complete retraining? Surely you jest. We just need the numbers to fill out the roster. Once we get the space freaks to exhaust their forces on this first wave, we'll send in our stronger troops to take them out. Eurasian, Asian, it doesn't matter. When we reach the PLANTs, we'll have brought enough people in as reinforcements to make this a Blue Cosmos victory."

**CE 71 August 29****th****, Holding Cell Block, Magong Forward Naval Base, Taiwan, Republic of East Asia**

**Night 22 01**

"Come out."

Kaguya looked upwards from where she sat as the officer, flanked by two MPs, entered her cell; she squinted as the glaring white lights on the roof shadowed the three men's faces from her sight. "A bit fast to decide my sentence, don't you think?"

The officer's voice was like two bricks grinding against each other. "You're being reassigned to the Ptolemaeus lunar base. You have an hour to pack your things. These two MPs will be guiding you through the processes."

Kaguya stood up and smoothened her orange jumpsuit. "…Understood."

_**Afterword:**_

_This is a more character-laying story rather than the one intended to bring closure to Kaohsiung. Ultimately, what happened to Kaohsiung was never elaborated upon, so one can only image how the OMNI forces would have handled it. _

_Rather than take another all-out battle approach, I've decided to showcase abit of what happened once the Atlantic Federation got ahold of control for OMNI. I hope to bring an end to the Kaohsiung issue, for that matter, but the last of the great conflicts are already well-covered in the anime; I will be skipping the final battles to attempt some of the post-war scenarios, probably those not involving fighting._


	20. Chapter 20: Whispers of the World

_**Author's Note:**_

_This fanfic is to write upon some of the events in Gundam SEED and SEED Destiny that are not touched upon or mentioned in-series, but their dates are listed on GundamWikia and are thus treated as part of canon. They are therefore based upon actual happenings in the Cosmic Era universe, but the events within them are open to interpretation. This fanfic is also an attempt at showcasing a "what-if" of all sides involved in the wars, and how some of the events within the show might have come to be._

**Gundam SEED: Tales of the Cosmic Era**

**Chapter 20: Whispers of the World**

**CE 71 December 22****nd****, Exact Location Unknown, Atlantic Federation**

**Time Unknown**

"And?" The man replied impatiently, drumming his hands against the large wooden table that took up most of the conference room. "I asked for results. It's been three months since the war ended, and there hasn't been a single whisper about renewed hostilities!"

The Atlantic Federation officer standing at the front of the room clasped his hands. "Sir, right now the moderates are exerting all the power they can to keep the armistice under control. Those of us in support of a second attack are trying to push for a re-mobilization, but…"

"Damned cowards," another man snarled. "What about the 81st Autonomous and the other forces under our supporters? Can we use them?"

"Negative, sir," the officer replied. "We lost a good number of men during the Second Battle of Jachin Due. With the current rebellion in the United States of South America, we can't afford to re-ignite the conflict with ZAFT."

"Watch your mouth, cur." The first man replied. "You're not in a position to make the call on whether to go to war or not."

"Regardless, he has a point." Another person replied. "We won't be supported by those damned Eurasians if we just carelessly start another war. Not only do we need to instigate an event, we also need to make sure we can't be tracked. ZAFT's not so stupid that they'll simply lash out at whoever attacks them. If we don't cover our tracks, we might be the ones going under the hammer this time."

The first man's voice was a low growl. "Do you doubt the strength we command?"

"You need to realize our current position. We no longer command a large portion of the Atlantic Federation military through our followers. In our haste to be rid of the Coordinators, we… or might I say, _you_, mostly," a third man spat, "placed a good number of our higher-ranked supporters on the Ptolemaeus Lunar Base, and on our attack fleet, to make sure the nuclear attack was carried out to the letter."

The first man grunted, but kept silent.

"The more important matter was the enemy's capabilities. I believe you all saw the footage of the third-party force running riot through both the ZAFT forces and us," the officer said. "Currently, our comrades are planning countermeasures, and we've decided to launch a new mobile suit development line as an interim counter."

"How about tracking them down?" The second man replied. "Is there any way we can find out their identities?"

"We have people in the Office of External Intelligence working on that. So far, we have a few leads, but other than knowing that their last known point of contact was the Orb Union, we have no other concrete information. Something is obstructing us."

"Lord Djibril's new world order does not permit anyone to have greater strength than him." The second man replied. "Find them. Eliminate them."

**CE 72 January 14****th****, Sector Babylon, East China Sea, Republic of East Asia.**

**Afternoon 13 52**

Master Sergeant Lee Hsiung-Siong put up a hand to shade his eyes from the glaring sun, the medium boat cutting through the waves as the small fleet of speedboats and assault craft sped through the waves, towards the abandoned city of Sector Babylon.

"Looks gloomy as hell," one of the men beside him remarked. "Why is the Republic Army getting involved in an operation over water, anyways?"

Hsiung Siong reached over to rap the man's helmet. "We're here for a more permanent holding operation because of manpower issues. Be thankful we're not joining the Marines in clean-up operations around the floating city… yet."

"I seriously think that anyone stupid enough to seek refuge in Sector Babylon is crazy," the soldier grumbled. "Who knows whether the reactor network in the island had leaked or not."

"The government left the place alone when they first established contact with it after the April Fool's Crisis, because they were late to the rescue and didn't have the resources to reclaim the area, not because Sector Babylon was in danger of collapsing or imploding." Hsiung Siong replied. "Since then, there's been more than a year for riffraff to accumulate in the silent city; and judging by how the mainland police are tracking a hell lot of smuggling cases that are passing through this general area, it's safe to assume that Sector Babylon's a lot more infested than the government thought."

"This sucks," the man continued to grouse. "I signed up to fight the Coordinators, not shoot my own people."

Hsiung Siong sighed and returned to watching the waves.

Despite the tenacity of the Republic of East Asia's troops, they did not manage to reclaim Kaohsiung in time for the nation to contribute to the space battles that had raged prior to the Second Battle of Jachin Due. Hsiung Siong wasn't sure, but ZAFT's manoeuvres during the two-month-long siege were nothing short of brilliant, a far cry compared to their efforts to pacify the Taiwanese people during their occupation of the place. Those tactics had prevented the Republic of East Asia from concentrating its forces on any one point, and their special forces had run riot through the city as they prevented Republic troops from establishing permanent footholds.

Then again, Hsiung Siong was sure that without the sudden spate of arrests that had run through the OMNI troops stationed with them, and without the sudden orders that had drawn off a large amount of their logistics support to the space front, and the announcement of the armistice, Hsiung Siong was sure that the Republic troops would have had the last laugh at the end of the third month of fighting.

What had bothered him the most, however, was that Hsiung Siong had spent most of the war in a hospital on mainland China. Severely injured in the battle that saw OMNI forces evacuating from Kaohsiung Base and later Taiwan itself, he had only later learned that Mendez was being recalled by OMNI to the Eurasian front, and that he himself had been returned from the OMNI garrison in Kaohsiung to being under the Republic of East Asia Army again. To top things off, a large part of the anti-armour infantry battalions were being disbanded in accordance to the restructuring of the Republic's armed forces, and those of the infantry were either shuffled off to other formations for re-training, or else told to leave the force.

The words of the young Army soldier floated to the top of his consciousness. "Back to hunting our own people again…" Hsiung Siong muttered as the medium boat pulled into one of Sector Babylon's prepared docks. Shouldering his rifle, the Master Sergeant stepped onto the dock, watching the proceedings as the men of his new command vacated the boats. He wondered how Mendez LaFouze, his former CO from when he was under OMNI's jurisdiction, was doing, and if he had survived the war.

Temporary spotlights had been placed in key locations throughout the covered complex, casting a soft orange glow everywhere. A few of the lights in the sheltered dock were still working, but most of the others had long ceased to function.

A Republic Marine, dressed in digital blue camouflage fatigues, approached Hsiung Siong. "I'm Lieutenant Jing Wei, 1st Platoon, 2nd Company, 3rd Battalion Republic Marines. Welcome to Camp Weilong. Is your CO with you?"

Hsiung Siong saluted. "Master Sergeant Lee Hsiung Siong, 3rd Company, 21st Battalion Republic Army. We'll be working alongside you starting from today; my CO will be here shortly with the second fleet of reinforcement ships."

"A pleasure to have the Army alongside us," Jing Wei replied, leading them towards the camp headquarters. "Pardon the shabby place, but we're still trying to expand out from here. It will take some time before the Republic of East Asia can bring back prosperity to this place."

As they walked, Jing Wei spoke to Hsiung Siong about the current situation. "We're got two battalions of Marines here. We've cleared a few dozen blocks outwards from here, and so far it's the same story with April Fool's situations everywhere. Abandoned buildings, old corpses, the usual." Jing Wei paused for a while. "Never thought I'll have the chance to see it myself. What about you?"

"I was fighting the ZAFT forces during the Defence of Kaohsiung," Hsiung Siong said. "Led an anti-armour company as the second-in-command throughout the entire thing. I can't say we were that effective though; enemy size, speed, firepower and countermeasures completely had us outclassed in a fair fight."

"I see," Jing Wei said. "But still, to take on mobile suits with men and explosives… that's more than just a bit crazy. Considering you're still standing after all that, I think we'll do well with you here."

Both men had reached the door to a medium-sized warehouse; Jing Wei stepped forward, and noticing that the door wasn't fully closed, reached out and pushed it open. "New arrivals are here, sir… ma'am?"

The female officer in front of the two men turned to look at them. "Well, Captain, I won't disturb your schedule any longer." She nodded at the man behind a steel table. "Thank you for giving me a bit of your time."

"Likewise, ma'am," Captain Sukhba Tsout said. The three men saluted, waiting until the Major was out of the room before dropping their stance.

Jing Wei struck first. "Who was that, sir? She looked like someone from the Republic Intelligence Arm."

"Major Yoko Asanogawa, of the 4th Republic Air Force's intelligence services, stationed on the Japanese mainland."

"A spook?" Hsiung Siong asked.

"Not that I know of, but she just delivered news that a few aircraft of the Republic Air Force up north had spotted a runaway ZAFT submarine coming to this region." Sukhba rubbed his temples. "Who knows how long we'll have to wait for mobile suit and naval reinforcements…"

"Excuse me, sir, but do we have concrete information on their forces?" Hsiung Siong asked.

"One submarine, I believe, with two GOOhNs and a DINN. I doubt they've discovered our presence here yet, but it's only a matter of time, and Major Asanogawa has delivered information to us that they're from an Earthbound group formed out of radical Coordinators and stranded ZAFT forces. They evaded the patrol at Sakhalin, and now they're somewhere underneath Sector Babylon, waiting for their chance."

"Three mobile suits…" Hsiung Siong muttered.

"Do you have an idea on how to deal with them, Master Sergeant?" Jing Wei asked.

"I won't presume to give suggestions to the Marines on how to board an enemy craft…" Hsiung Siong said. "But if we're forced to go toe-to-toe with their mobile suits, then I believe that I can help. If we can lure them into a tight place…" Hsiung Siong's lips split in a toothy grin, slamming his right fist into his left palm. "Boom."

**CE 72 March 9****th****, The Millennium Complex, Copernicus City, Luna**

**Evening 18 36**

An artificial dusk enveloped the lunar city of Copernicus, the roadways of the vast underground complex filled with electric cars, driven by people wanting nothing more than to go home and rest. Above, light clouds partially obscured the geometric patterns of the top of the habitat dome, leaving a small clue to its inhabitants of their true whereabouts.

From dozens of meters high up, Nain bint Aamir, Major of the Atlantic Federation's Bureau of Intelligence, watched the lunar inhabitants from the building, and envied them. Untouched by war, unconcerned with outside happenings, the unique status Copernicus gained as a semi-independent, neutral state that was part of the Atlantic Federation in only name allowed them to reverse a lot of the policies that they didn't like, at least for their region of governance. It was also this status that allowed them to act as a neutral point for tomorrow's ceremony, the signing of the peace treaty between the nations of Earth and ZAFT, which would end the Bloody Valentine War once and for all.

Throughout the Bloody Valentine War, Nain, as an intelligence officer, had gotten wind of several plans to revamp Copernicus into a military base, with plans being contributed from both OMNI sources and counter-intelligence operations into the ZAFT war machine. The lunar city was built into one of the more easily-fortified locations on the Moon, well before the Atlantic Federation had decided to set up armed holdings there, and with a proper conversion, Copernicus, long used to a degree of self-sustenance, would be able to further fuel whichever side had a foothold on it.

Thankfully, whether her superiors were prudent to quietly put down those plans whenever they found them, or if those responsible for the plans had decided not to set them into action, Copernicus remained untouched, and the inhabitants of this lunar city were allowed to continue on with their lives.

A knock on the door caused Nain to turn her view away from the outside. "It's not locked," she called out.

March Cornerstone, Lt. Colonel of the Atlantic Federation's Bureau of Intelligence, entered the room. "So that's where you disappeared to," the middle-aged man replied. "You're not a very sociable person, are you?"

Nina turned her gaze back to the bustling view below. "Being posted to OMNI's Department of External Security taught me a lot of things, sir." She sighed. "One, everyone in that room is a schemer until cleared through action. Two, situations can change in the blink of an eye, especially when you factor in terrorism, given how every radical and their mother these days are talking about revolution."

Nain turned to face March. "And thirdly, the way everything is proceeding smoothly unsettles me."

March sat himself down on one of the sofa chairs in the room, leaning back into a comfortable position. "It is our nature to be suspicious. But being too suspicious is no good, you know that?"

"That may be true," Nain said. "It's just that this is the first major step towards peace since the armistice signed on September 27th, the Second Battle of Jachin Due. All that's need is just one push… one careless spark to re-ignite it all."

"Well, let's run a little test to see how close we are to that spark." March said. "Regarding ZAFT, there were several medium-level council members, some of their more decorated pilots… hmm, I remember one of them being Yzak Joule, recently cleared of war crimes… and leading them all, of course, is Eileen Canaver, ZAFT's representative in this ceremony, a member of PLANT Supreme Council, and the current chairwoman of the Diplomatic Committee." March thought for a while. "Nain, how about you tell me who OMNI's representatives are?"

"Regulus Greyson, Lieutenant General of the Eurasian West Second Army, best known for his defence of the Saragossa Line," Nain said. "Roan Moran, Colonel of the Eurasian Federation, best known for his strategies during Operation 8.8, and recently promoted to a member of the newly-established OMNI Strike Command. Tabitha Enice, chairwoman of the Eurasian Federation's governing body. Mrs. Enice's aide, Grenda Kelmov. Kang Zeng Wan, Lieutenant-General of the Republic of East Asia. Asakura Touga, the Vice-Minister of Foreign Relations for the Republic of East Asia. Do you want me to list their aides and the other minor dignitaries as well?"

March leaned his head on his left hand, letting out a small sigh. "You can skip those from Africa, the Kingdom of Scandinavia, Orb, and the others. They're here to just add their faces to the newspapers and to see the signing. Name me the dignitaries from the Atlantic Federation."

Nain turned to look at March, her eyes narrowed. "Fredrick Rayburn, Brigadier General of the 3rd Atlantic Army. Hester Saga, the current Vice-President of the Atlantic Federation. They have an aide each. That is all."

March returned Nain's stare with his own. "You know what this means, don't you?"

Nain looked around the entire room.

"Have a bit more faith in your superior," March said. "This place was cleaned of bugs long before we began this conversation."

"Brigadier-General Rayburn is a known moderate. But Hester Saga… he's here to watch and learn about the Coordinators' actions, isn't he? All for the shadow men at home."

"You know as well as I do, don't you?" March said. "They've been silent so far, and they even decided to send the vice-president over so as to take eyes off their remaining supporters in the military. Well, that's what I think, anyways." He got up, and joined Nain at the window-side. "There's the war without, and then there's the war within. Ours is the war within. To reverse what our predecessors sowed during the days of chaos, when the word 'Coordinator' was enough to get you a hefty fine."

Nain watched as another wave of cars stopped for a red light. "Do you think that is possible? That with just us, we can bring the country to what it was, before ambition and desperation drove us to direct our fear and hatred outwards?"

March smirked. "Nain, you underestimate us. The people right now are being misled by the government, who are themselves misled by a few people in the right places." He balled his hands into fists. "If we can create a chance to eliminate the leadership of Blue Cosmos and their supporters, their peons running around on the ground, without their influential leaders to plant the seeds of hatred in the minds of the people, would never be able to afflict us with such blind hatred ever again."

"A chance…" Nain muttered. "Were it so easy."

**CE 72 July 23****rd****, **2nd Armoured Division HQ, O.R.B. Headquarters Building, Orb Union Mainland

Afternoon 14 54

The intercom chimed once. "Commander Kousaka!"

Kousaka Kae, a Commander of the Orb Union's Orb Recon Brigade, the military arm of Orb's Office of External Affairs, sighed and pressed the desk button to unlock her office door, not bothering to look up from her mountain of paperwork. "What is it? Make it quick."

The clerk entered quickly. "T-the reports that you requested, ma'am," she replied, placing a sizeable stack of folders marked "Confidential" onto her desk.

"Right. Good work. You may leave." Kae muttered, waving the clerk away.

The door to her office shut with a soft sound, and Kae let herself relax as she leaned backwards, one hand taking off her spectacles in a careless gesture. Massaging the bridge of her nose with her free hand, she set the spectacles down and took one of the folders.

For the next hour, Kae continued to read the reports sent by her comrades around the world. Despite the end of the Bloody Valentine War, the Office of External Affairs had not allowed the Orb Recon Brigade to cease in the mission tasked to them after the fall of Orb, and at the present, only a skeleton force remained to keep the brigade-sized unit in running order.

Hawaki and Houka Kananoh, the commanders of the 2nd Armoured Contingent, were still on the Ame-no-Mihashira, Orb's remaining space-borne military asset, an industrial site and satellite complex under the command of the Sahaku family. Those under them took turns to venture into the space beyond, travelling to Copernicus, the PLANTS, and even going as far as to enter the abandoned facilities that littered Earth orbit. All to gather news and chase even the smallest inkling of a ghost. When it came to information-gathering, no effort could be spared.

With the end of the war, Cayne Hastler and his men of the 3rd Armoured Contingent had been reassigned from Ame-no-Mihashira to terrestrial intelligence operations. Kae allowed herself a small smile when she thought of Cayne being back in his element; the lands of the Atlantic Federation.

While Andi Sakovich and the 5th Armoured Contingent had been with Kae and her forces during Orb's tenure under OMNI, the end of the war saw them deployed to the mainline Orb military as aggressors and trainers for their new mobile suit pilots. As a result, Kae rarely saw them back at the Recon Brigade's headquarters.

The 6th Armoured Contingent, and the smallest MS unit of the brigade by far at only two pilots, was commanded by Mei Kenroukuen, whose orders were to infiltrate the OMNI military. Lost during the battle of Orb, Kae had only ever seen two reports from her; one was when she was made the commander of her own squadron, and the other was from right after the Bloody Valentine War, which detailed how she was taken down the rank ladder by internal security forces. Mei's subordinate, Kyoukou Hanamori, was currently residing in Orb due to combat injuries, although with her commander gone and ORB temporarily restricted from taking any major combat duties, Kyoukou did not have any other choice but to suffer the curse of the paperwork in the main workplace alongside Kae's men, one level below Kyoukou's personal office.

What burned her the most, however, was the field commander of ORB, Captain Amaki Reishou. The information he passed over was only for the eyes of the highest officers in the Office of External Affairs, and the only way Kae knew he was still alive was an e-letter, usually with nothing more than a terse greeting, that he would always send with his information, with the instruction that the letter was to reach the eyes and ears of the ORB forces currently in the Union.

Kae spun around in her chair and stood up, the view from her office tall enough to give her a view of Onogoro Island. The charred scar on the land was still visible, a result of the island's self-destruction when it was under threat of being taken by OMNI for their mass driver. Repairs had begun as soon as the Orb government was allowed to return, and both the mass driver, and the restoration of Onogoro's military facilities, was coming along nicely.

The clock on her desk emitting the alarm for three o' clock in the afternoon brought Kae back. Grumbling, the ORB officer dived back into her paperwork, wondering if she should requisition Kyoukou or one of her subordinates for the tasteless job of being her personal aide, the better to share her workload with.

**CE 73 March 30****th****, Concord, New Hampshire, Atlantic Federation**

**Night 20 38**

The sound of the doorbell echoed throughout the small, dimly-lit apartment. Ray Feric shuffled through the various detritus and items strewn about to reach the door, opening it as far as the door chain would allow. Outside, a male officer stood, the badge of the Atlantic Federation Army glinting from the corridor lights. A Captain's bars adorned his collar.

"Lieutenant," the man began.

Ray slammed the door shut.

"Lieutenant, wait! You have to listen to me!"

Ray leaned against the door, feeling the weight of his past pressing down on his shoulders. The faces of his dead comrades continued to play through his consciousness as he struggled to keep his voice under control. "Kelvin, we've been through this numerous times. I'm not going back to the army."

"Ray… we need you. We need someone with the experience! With the number of casualties from the final battles of the Bloody Valentine War and the business with the USSA War for Independence, we're having trouble keeping up with training our new officers!"

"I've said it before, Kelvin," Ray replied, his hoarse voice barely louder than a whisper. "I'm done with the army after what they did. If they're not going to let me go, I'll make them let me go. AWOL, poor conduct, misuse of authority, it doesn't matter. Any reason is fine."

"Lieutenant…"

"Don't risk your standing to defend me anymore, Kelvin." Ray said. "A new Captain's words are only worth that much, after all."

Kelvin gritted his teeth and took a deep breath. "Don't lie to me. You and I both have had our own troubles during the Bloody Valentine War and the USSA's War of Independence!" He slammed his fist against the door once. "This… is about Lin, isn't it? You still haven't gotten over her death at Jachin Due!"

Ray growled, unlatched the door and swung it open, reaching out to grab Kelvin by the collar. For a second, Kelvin glimpsed a table cluttered with pills and alcohol, before his vision filled with a man whose face was gaunt, his eyes filled with a dark fire that showed only the tip of the iceberg that was his mental state. "Don't let me hear you use her name like that." He snarled.

"I… kuh… Don't want to see you like this…" Kelvin said. "An officer… of your calibre…"

Ray let go of his collar. "Why are you so adamant about my return? What can one man do? I can teach them all the battle tactics and officer's ethics I want to, but when they get dispersed to their units, it's up to them to decide which path they want to walk."

"I know that." Kelvin said. "Which is why we need people like you, people who understand what it truly means to be a soldier, to educate the next generation. You should have realized from what's on the news nowadays, that the period of moderate rule we've enjoyed in the immediate aftermath of the Bloody Valentine War has ended. "

"… And?" Ray said, locking his gaze with Kelvin's.

To his credit, Kelvin did not back down. "… And I plan on stopping the damned radicals in their tracks."

_**Afterword:**__ A simple collection of short stories that would, hopefully, give the reader some insight into what went on throughout the world in the time in-between the first and second Bloody Valentine Wars. The next work in planning is a story segment in-between this, and the start of the Second Bloody Valentine War. _


	21. Chapter 21: Closet of Skeletons

_**Author's Note:**_

_This fanfic is to write upon some of the events in Gundam SEED and SEED Destiny that are not touched upon or mentioned in-series, but their dates are listed on GundamWikia and are thus treated as part of canon. They are therefore based upon actual happenings in the Cosmic Era universe, but the events within them are open to interpretation. This fanfic is also an attempt at showcasing a "what-if" of all sides involved in the wars, and how some of the events within the show might have come to be._

**Gundam SEED: Tales of the Cosmic Era**

**Chapter 21: Closet of Skeletons**

**CE 71 August 3****rd****, Kaohsiung Base Main Runway, Republic of East Asia**

**Evening 17 55**

Aleiya Varchenowa watched from her window seat as the trans-atmospheric shuttle lifted off from the rails of the Kaohsiung Mass Driver, the massive aircraft taking into the darkening skies. Four DINNs, already in the air, surrounded the shuttle, the blue thruster flare of their engines casting a shadow over their frontal features, leaving their monoeye cameras conspicuously visible as they followed the shuttle's angle and acceleration.

Parting with the NGO doctor, Richard Camelot, off the coast of northern Taiwan, Aleiya had made her way through the island, dodging OMNI and ZAFT shelling, hiding when she needed to, and bunking with the homeless locals when she could, until she had managed to attract the attention of a ZAFT patrol. With some difficulty, she had managed to convince them to take her to the Kaohsiung Base, where she was finally cleared as a Coordinator, and a missing ZAFT pilot.

To her disappointment, however, her new orders had come in almost the same day; she was to be shipped from Kaohsiung back into space, where ZAFT high command had anticipated that the war would be focusing on. She was given just one hour to make ready and join the other pilots and injured that would be sent to the PLANTS on that trip; she had spent the better part of that time making personnel inquiries as to where the teammates and comrades had ended up.

Her teammates, who had followed her into JOSH-A, and whom she was separated from following their desperate escape massive explosion that had engulfed the base. Larry Falke, her former commander, whom she briefly spoke to before the drop operation to take JOSH-A. Rowen Nexza, her friend and fellow graduate, whom she had maintained close contact with following their first assignment together against the OMNI satellite base Nova.

Her teammates, save one, who had already left for the space-front, were all either listed as MIA during the Battle of JOSH-A, or else were confirmed KIA. Larry Falke had been heavily wounded, retrieved after the battle, and had been sent back to the PLANTS for further treatment. Rowen managed to escape, and had been integrated into the Kaohsiung forces, but was missing in action after a skirmish against OMNI forces on the west coast of Taiwan; his unit was found, in poor condition, but the person remained missing.

As the blue sky began to turn dark at the fringes, the DINNs turned away, their mission to escort the shuttle over the OMNI naval blockade complete. The sky begun to turn dark, revealing a spread of glittering stars against a black backdrop, and Aleiya leaned into her seat, letting her senses rest as the shuttle angled towards a ZAFT transport ship in the distance, flanked by two _Laurasia_-class frigates, and continued its journey to bring them back to their rightful home.

**CE 73 June 11****th****, ZAFT ****Nazca-class destroyer [ZSFC-L2-P032] **_**Ironheart**_**, Patrol Route A7D2, Lagrange Point 2 **

**05 35**

Aleiya brought her hand down heavily onto the alarm clock she kept by her bedside, the hit silencing the device's shrill alarm. Her right arm reaching over her body, she undid the first strap on her bed, letting her upper body drift into an upright position. All that remained in her mind from the dream, drawn from her memory, was a vague sense of unease.

Despite the usefulness of compartmentalized artificial gravity, Aleiya preferred sleeping without it. Slowly undoing the other straps, she stifled a yawn as she slowly pushed herself off the bed, around the room, and finally into the bathroom where her feet slowly settled onto the floor, as the gravity was set to a quarter of 1G. Adjustments of the gravity settings back to normal could, thankfully, be set to automatic upon entering the bathroom, as Aleiya had once personally experienced that no one who was asleep ten minutes ago actually cared what the settings were until the bathroom was a maelstrom of water droplets; and they still wouldn't be sober enough to change the settings, no matter how wet they were, until they could breath properly.

Twenty minutes later in the corridor, Houjou Muramaki, ZAFT greenshirt pilot passing by, jumped as the door beside her opened, revealing a neatly-dressed Aleiya. "M-morning, commander Varchenowa," she stammered, trying to catch the documents that she had flung out of her hands. "Y-you look very good today!"

"You need to get used to not being surprised, Houjou," Aleiya said, grabbing a few pieces close to her and handing them to her pink-faced subordinate. "You'll be useless in a sniper ambush otherwise. Who are these for?"

"S-sorry," the young pilot stammered. "I forgot to pass those documents to Darry yesterday. I was hoping to catch him at his room first…"

Aleiya looked at Houjo shuffling through her documents, and huffed. "Well, whatever. Have you eaten?"

"No, ma'am," Houjo replied, pulling the documents close to her body.

Aleiya grinned. "Well, I heard that today's scrambled eggs." Ignoring the look of trepidation on her subordinate's face, Aleiya threw her right arm around the younger girl's waist and pushed off the floor, the pair speeding down the empty corridor in a manner reminiscent of a high-speed pinball. "Let's get some breakfast before the mess hall gets full!"

Minutes later, Aleiya, and a slightly dishevelled Houjou, entered the ship's mess hall, touching down just outside the area so that they wouldn't hit the floor due to the change in gravity settings. True to Aleiya's words, the place was mostly empty except for a few who were slated for duty, here to get an early breakfast before going to relieve their comrades at their stations.

Motioning for Houjou to sit, it didn't take long for Aleiya to return with two sets of breakfast. "About the only day they ever do breakfast right is when the meal has scrambled eggs in it," Aleiya replied. "Well, are you up for today's mock combat session, Houjou?"

Houjou sniffed a little. "I'm going to get beaten again, right?"

Aleiya frowned. "You could honestly do with much less of your gloomy attitude." Cutting out a chunk of scrambled eggs, Aleiya speared it with her fork, along with another slice of ham and a small cube of cheese. "I honestly wondered how you made it past training with that attitude."

At that statement, Houjou only looked more downcast.

Aleiya sighed and patted her subordinate on her shoulder. "Alright, alright, I'm sorry for saying that. You'll pair up with Darry and Genan today, alright? I'll take you all on alone."

"That-!" Houjou said, turning to look at Aleiya, only to find her own mouth full of ham, cheese, and egg, the handle of Aleiya's fork sticking out of her mouth.

"Eat. You've been staring at your food for minutes. At this rate, you'll remain kid-sized for eternity." Aleiya said.

Leaving a red-faced Houjou to tuck into her breakfast, Aleiya's mind wandered towards her own team. Today was another scheduled session of training, with one round against Darian Forsseseur's team to wrap things up. The leader of the other MS unit currently stationed on the _Ironheart_, Darian Forsseseur, like Aleiya, was a Bloody Valentine War veteran, and his team was likewise comprised of freshly commissioned pilots of ZAFT; their teams' current situation were all part of ZAFT's policies to spread its veterans around to speed up the advanced training for the new pilots. Darian's own combat record was substantially more illustrious, however, and Aleiya's only consolation was that her other team member, Genan Cressa, was as much of a veteran as herself.

Darry Amberheart and Houjou Murakami were both fresh graduates from ZAFT's pilot academy; the confident and over-optimistic Darry, at seventeen, was almost too much for Aleiya to stomach, and the quiet, timid and small-sized Houjo, at just two and a half months into sixteen, was as much trouble as Darry was, for an entirely different set of reasons. Yet, on their graduation profiles, some praise had been given to them; apart from having respectable pilot aptitude scores, Darry was marked as a marksman of considerable calibre, while Houjou's remarks were a simple "surprising performance under pressure".

Aleiya wryly noted that in the four combat sessions she had with them, she had yet to see any of those points manifest.

**CE 73 June 11****th****, 1 100 kilometres from ZAFT ****Nazca-class destroyer [ZSFC-L2-P032] **_**Ironheart**_**, Patrol Route A7D2, Lagrange Point 2 **

**10 05**

Against a backdrop of stars, Aleiya's CGUE Assault drifted, the grey-schemed unit emitting clouds of propellant flare as Aleiya adjusted its trajectory. Debris drifted around, the remnants of several space battles clustered around this particular point; most of them had drifted from the moon, which had been the locations of many battles during the onset of the Bloody Valentine War, and the unfortunate recipient of former PLANT Supreme Chairman Patrick Zala's GENESIS directed laser weapon.

Within the cockpit, Aleiya watched the viewscreen, her eyes moving across the screen, as a CGUE and two GuAIZ Rs weaved their way through the maze of assorted objects. True to her words, Aleiya had paired Houjou and Darry up with Genan; she could afford to relax if it was just the new pilots, but Aleiya could never resist a good spar with an equal like Genan.

Hesitating for just a moment, Aleiya's CGUE Assault snagged a piece of debris and flung it towards the trio. It was just a small object, but the sensors of the mobile suits picked it up, and as the thrusters of the CGUE Assault came to life, the two GuAIZ Rs turned to face their adversary, and their beam rifles began to hurl brilliant spears of green light at her.

Genan couldn't help but smirk at the pilots falling for the obvious baiting attempt. Even so, Aleiya's gesture was as much a sign of challenge to him as it was a taunt at the new pilots. "Well, what are you guys just firing for?! Chase her!"

Darry was almost away immediately. "Ha! Alright, Houjou, let's take her on!"

Houjou, however, was overly cautious. "W-wait! I-if it's a trap…"

This lapse in teamwork was enough for Aleiya to seal their fates. In one smooth manoeuvre, Aleiya's CGUE Assault reversed directions to meet Darry's GuAIZ R head-on; simulated 28mm rounds struck Darry's GuAIZ R, putting the younger pilot out of the fight immediately.

"Ah," Genan said, his voice low. "I always forget about their lack of synergy when it comes to attack."

The GuAIZ R drifted, its networking system having automatically stabilized the mobile suit and shut down its thrusters in accordance with the "rules" of the mock combat exercise. Aleiya passed the inert mobile suit, her CGUE Assault gunning for a panicking Houjo, as Genan moved to take his squad leader head-on.

While the CGUE Assault was meant for hit-and-run combat in heavy fire conditions, Aleiya had no compunctions using the shields on both hands of her mobile suit to block the sword blows and shield strikes of her opponent. Genan gave a short laugh as the CGUE and CGUE Assault locked their blows, thrusters flaring as the two mobile suits pushed against each other. "I guess it all boils down to this every time, eh?"

Aleiya fired the left thrusters of her mobile suit, letting Genan's blow slide past her as she put some distance between them. "I'm thinking that the first practice match of having the two of them trying to take you down, and me watching as an instructor, might actually be more effective than our current arrangement."

Her CGUE Assault raised one arm and sent a stream of vulcan fire towards Houjou, sending the younger pilot, who had been lining up a shot from the back, scrambling to put some distance between her unit and Aleiya's arc of fire. "Well, they're still young, they'll learn," Genan said, his eyes following the CGUE Assault as it drifted further.

Aleiya huffed irritably. "No, I'm just tired of having to lose to Darian and company every time."

New contacts appeared on the CGUE Assault's radar as Darian opened up a channel to Aleiya. "Well, miss, care to give me my fifth win in a row?"

Aleiya made a sound of discontent. "Well people, you heard the orders. Halberd Team, form up!"

Amidst the debris, the eight mobile suits faced each other, the assorted units of Halberd Team against the two GuAIZs and GuAIZ Rs of Darian's team.

A new channel opened, connected to the mobile suits of each team. "This is the _Ironheart's_ CIC Officer, temporary callsign Castle," the operator said. "All units, prepare for mock combat. The conditions to victory are simple; to destroy all members of the opposing team. For this exercise, melee weapons are not actually equipped, and so your mobile suits will adjust their performance to compensate. The displays will still show actual combat graphics tor the sake of realism. All team leaders, report your status."

"Halberd Team here," Aleiya said. "All green."

"Blaster Team here," Darian replied. "Good to go."

"Alright. Exercise begins on my mark. 3… 2… 1… mark!"

The eight mobile suits were off the moment the operator gave the command, Aleiya rocketing straight for the enemy formation. "Houjou, Darry! Take your positions!"

Darry was already in place. "Yeah! I got this, ma'am!"

"I… in position," Houjo said. "Ready!"

Darian's team scattered as Aleiya sent twin arcs of 28mm rounds towards their formation. "Darry! Houjou! Remember what I said; work in a pair!"

"Got it!" Darry said. "C'mon, Houjo, let's take that guy out!"

"R-roger…"

The two GuAIZ Rs changed directions and went after one of Blaster Team's GuAIZ R; Genan had engaged Blaster Two, and Aleiya found herself face-to-face with Darian in his GuAIZ.

The GuAIZ rained blow after blow onto the CGUE Assault's shields as Darian kept up a steady rain of attacks on Aleiya. The CGUE Assault reciprocated with a kick from behind its block that sent the GuAIZ tumbling backwards, but the moment of respite was short-lived, as a rocket anchor connected with the CGUE Assault's left leg. Simulated beams pierced the limb in its joint.

"Left leg, inactive," the computer intoned.

The rocket anchor was retracted even as Darian rushed Aleiya, the beam claws on his GuAIZ's shield alight. "This is it!"

Elsewhere, Houjou and Darry were weaving through the debris, green shots striking through the space around them as the two GuAIZ Rs from Blaster Team, having gotten their act together, continued to hunt them down.

Houjou gritted her teeth as she looked around frantically. All she could see were debris bypassing her mobile suit at dizzying speeds. "Can't… find a way… to reverse this…"

Darry, meanwhile, was having better luck at sending the two other pilots dodging as he returned fire with the GUAIZ R's beam rifle and mounted railguns. "C'mon, Houjou, stop running and turn to face them!"

Houjou turned her GUAIZ R around just in time for the mobile suit to take an enemy shot to its shield. While the round was simulated, the onboard computers had no trouble following through with the effects of the hit, and Houjou's GUAIZ R tumbled out of control as the mobile suit's thrusters automatically fired in erratic patterns to simulate the impact of the railgun round.

Darry grimaced at Houjou's scream. "You're not dodging enough!"

"Can't… get it… to stop!" Houjo said, her jaws clenched.

Darry continued to move erratically, dodging the simulated beams that the other GuAIZ Rs hurled at him. "Tsk!"

The first GuAIZ R from Blaster suddenly went motionless as Genan dived towards their two-man formation, taking out one mobile suit even before it had covered half the distance. Unclipping its sword, Genan's CGUE rushed the last GuAIZ R, and before the opponent could activate his mobile suit's shield-mounted beam sword, the CGUE had "sliced" through the GuAIZ R's torso.

"Hell yeah!" Darry crowed. "That was one hell of a-"

"Keep on your toes, Halberd 4!" Genan said. "This match isn't over yet!"

From Genan's direction another GuAIZ came flying, beam rifle spitting shots at Genan's unit to keep him away. Faster than Darry could react, its rocket anchor shot out and wrapped around the leg of Darry's unit. A sensation of sudden motion and the feeling of pressure that followed told Darry all he needed to know without even looking at the displays; his unit was being pulled in.

"Uwaaaaah!"

Darry was flailing when another GuAIZ R rushed in from the side; Houjou's unit slammed into Blaster-2's GuAIZ, and both units tumbled. The thrusters on Genan's CGUE lighted up as he prepared to move into close-combat; at his range, the CGUE's automatic weapons would hit both Blaster-2 and Houjo. Houjo, however, managed to disengage from the fight, allowing Genan to rain a withering hail of fire down onto Blaster-2.

"This is Castle," the _Ironheart's _CIC called out. "All members of Blaster Team are incapacitated. Halberd Team has lost Halberd Leader to enemy fire. The round is over. Please return to the ship. CIC will now be reverting to callsign _Ironheart_."

Darry folded his arms behind his head as he engaged the autopilot. "We won, huh? Looks like we're getting better after all!"

"Getting better, my ass!" Aleiya's voice cut in abruptly, causing Genan, Darry and Houjou to wince from the sound volume. "Houjou, count yourself lucky Blaster-2 was trying to shake you off as well. In a live situation, the enemy pilot would probably disable you and use you as a shield, and Darry and Genan would be in trouble!"

"Y-yes, ma'am…" Houjou stammered.

Aleiya sighed; taking off her helmet, she ran her hand through her hair. "Well, that's that. Darry… well, you seem to have improved. Not bad for today."

"Eh?! Just 'not bad'?! I was dodging and returning fire at the same time!"

"'Not bad' is already more than enough! I taught the two of you some simple counter-moves the last time, and yet I didn't even see any indications of such manoeuvres in this match!"

Genan couldn't help but laugh as the exchange continued. "Well, we have plenty of time to work on them in the future. Let's just get back to the ship-"

"This is _Ironheart_ to all mobile suit forces. Unknown signature has been detected at bearing seven-one-seven from the ship." The operator paused again, as though verifying the information. "Change of information. Seven signatures have been identified as mobile suits. The last one appears to be a high-speed medium ship."

Aleiya frowned as she studied the new data fed to her mobile suit's displays by the ship. "This… this is an attack formation! Maneuver Five, Flanker!"

The captain of the _Ironheart_ was the one talking this time, accompanied by a tactical display sent to each mobile suit, displaying the enemy mobile suits approaching from three directions; one team chasing from behind, while two teams encircled it. "This is Captain Viendi to all mobile suit forces. The ship has been determined to be broadcasting an international distress signal. As per international distress protocols, we will be moving to engage the unknown mobile suits. All mobile suits teams are to prepare for combat resupply. I repeat, all teams are to prepare for combat resupply."

Blaster and Halberd Teams fell into formation as the _Ironheart_ turned; the destroyer quickly realigned itself, the blue glow of its powerful engines sending it towards the new group of contacts. Its launch bay doors opened, and the _Ironheart_ spit out two containers from its linear catapult; one was a container for beam weaponry, and the other carried solid ammunition.

Aleiya moved her CGUE close to the second container, matching the velocities of both mobile suit and container, quickly taking several blocks of 28mm rounds for herself. As an afterthought, she grabbed a heavy sword from the container itself. "Genan, Darry, Houjou! Are you ready?"

"All clear," Genan replied, as he moved his CGUE.

"We're almost done!" Darry said. "Houjou's ready too!"

Aleiya opened a channel to Darian. "Me and Genan will move out first. Bring up the rear with Darry and Houjou as fast as you can."

"Don't sweat it," Darian replied. "And don't steal the fun! Leave some for us."

"We're not going to shoot, we're just going to order a standoff. I hope." Aleiya said. "Halberd Team, move out!"

**CE 73 June 11****th****, 1 200 kilometres from ZAFT ****Nazca-class destroyer [ZSFC-L2-P032] **_**Ironheart**_**, Patrol Route A7D2, Lagrange Point 2 **

**11 12**

Aleiya frowned as the computer brought up enhanced images of the unknowns. The mobile suits looked like GINNs, but their engine arrangement and some aspects of their design were different.

And they were all swarming for the light ship.

"Halberd 2, this is Leader. I'll be going on ahead. Fall back and link up with Halberd 3 and 4 to form a second picket line."

"Roger, Leader. Stay safe."

The CGUE Assault's frame rumbled as Aleiya pushed the engines of her mobile suit to the maximum. The strike unit quickly closed to within range, and Aleiya broadcasted her message on all frequencies.

"Attention to all unknowns! A ZAFT military presence is in this area! By international law, we're required to answer to any and all international distress calls within our effective range! Stand down!"

For a moment, Aleiya was hopeful. The mobile suits had slowed down, and it looked as though their pilots were contemplating their actions. Maybe it was one of those underworld organizations and they might even get some information about smugglers for her eff-

That illusion was gone in an instant as one of the unknowns separated from the pack, and gunned straight for Aleiya. Only a single transmission gave any measure of warning; "ZAFT? Don't make me laugh. ZAFT was dead at the end of the war!"

"Don't mess with me!" Aleiya snarled, and the CGUE Assault met the unknown in a vicious clash. Up close, Aleiya could see the resemblance to the GINN, but the unknowns were much faster and more agile, and were using entirely different weaponry. Her own opponent was using a sword of a different model from the ZAFT standard, far thinner and slightly shorter; the edge, however, had the telltale glint of heavy anti-beam coating. At its other side hung a rifle that Aleiya guessed was a beam weapon; it lacked anything that looked like a magazine hanging off it, and its barrel bore diameter was far too large for any slug-flinging rifle of its size. "I don't know who the hell you are, but those are dangerous words to be saying to a ZAFT soldier!"

Shoving the unknown back, the CGUE Assault brought up both 28mm vulcan guns on its arms and sent a stream of fire towards the six unknowns gunning for the light ship, forcing them to scatter. "Don't get distracted, now," Aleiya said, knowing full well that she was still on an open channel. "Your opponent is me!"

Two of the unknowns immediately turned back and unsheathed their swords, the blue flare on their backs burning a blinding white as they charged Aleiya. The other unknowns vectored towards the ship, swords unsheathed, gunning for the medium craft's engines and midsection, where a good hit would gut the vessel without damaging the bridge.

Aleiya switched to the team channel, sending one last burst of fire towards the unknowns headed towards the ship. "Halberd Leader to Halberd all! I've drawn three of them off; prioritize the ship and its safety!"

"Can you see anything outstanding about them?" Genan asked.

"Be prepared," Aleiya said, engaging her CGUE Assault's afterburners as she sought to put distance between her pursuers and her. "They're definitely not pirates or even your organized crime lapdogs."

"No one in their right minds would challenge a ZAFT force…" Houjou whispered. "Political trouble on Luna? Deserters? Or…"

"Keep focused, Houjou," Genan said. "Don't bother yourself with such details at this point of time."

"R-right," Houjou replied.

The unknowns scattered as Genan, Houjo and Darry fired, their barrage sending the units scattering for a moment. Genan put his mobile suit's hand on the ship's hull, and knocked thrice.

"… … …hank goodness, it's ZAFT! Hello? Hello?"

"I can hear you," Genan said, as the CGUE's onboard computers latched onto the open-wave message so as to establish a secure channel with the ship's communication systems. "Keep moving in the same direction; another mobile suit team will be bypassing you shortly. Link up with the _Nazca_-class destroyer after it."

Pushing off from the ship, Genan pushed the CGUE forward. "Darry, Houjou, follow me! We're going to show these louts how ZAFT conducts a battle!"

"Roger!"

Genan's CGUE, followed by Houjou and Darry in their GuAIZ Rs, fell into an arrowhead formation, their machines almost perfectly spaced. The lead unknown scattered as a withering hail of fire spread forth from all three machines, the return fire of the enemies slashing through air as Halberd Team wove through the spread of enemy units.

"Houjou!" Genan said. "Get ready to split, then double back to hit the targets chasing me! Darry! Go with her, and the both of you, make sure to come back in one piece!"

"Alright!" Darry said. "C'mon, you bastards!"

Both GuAIZ Rs veered away from the CGUE, two of the unknowns following them and ignoring the bursts of 28mm he had sent their way to distract them. Genan cursed the unknowns for foiling his plans and slammed the controls, pushing the manoeuvrability of his CGUE to its maximum as he drew his sword weapon as fast as he could, hoping to catch his own pursuers off-guard.

To his surprise, the foremost unknown caught his quick draw, the mobile suit turning to its right and unsheathing its own blade in a backhand draw to block the blow even as the inertia from its own thrusters brought it towards Genan. From in-between its outstretched left arm and the blade, the barrel of a beam rifle poked out, and only a last minute burn of the CGUE's front thrusters saved Genan from being immolated in a single shot, his mobile suit quickly putting distance between the two units.

His opponents didn't waste any time, with the second unknown sending well-aimed shots at his CGUE. Dodging the shots while continuing his retreat, Genan decided to head towards Houjou and Darry, only for the first unknown he had engaged to hit him with a rushing strike; Genan managed to catch the blow with his CGUE's shield, but the power behind the blow and the speed sent the CGUE tumbling off-course.

Genan grunted as the G-forces pressed on his body. "Houjo! Darry! Keep on your toes, don't let them get close! Run if you have to! These…!"

Darry looked around as the transmission from Genan burst into segments of statics, his words barely filtering through. "What? Genan? Genan!"

"Darry!" Houjou said. "The front-"

Darry's GuAIZ R barely brought its shield up in time as one of the unknowns swept in from below it, the horizontal strike from its sword sending the lighter mobile suit veering off. The GuAIZ R, being the downgraded production version of the GuAIZ, introduced after the war, had traded manoeuvrability and speed for more firepower and ease of control. Even if Darry could have matched the unknowns in skill, the GuAIZ R was not a good choice to take them on.

Houjou's shot towards Darry's assailant went wide as she fought to keep the unknown behind her from acquiring a target lock. "Darry!"

The reply, surprisingly, came from Darian Forsseseur. "Blaster Leader to Halberd Three! Keep calm and maintain course!"

To Houjou's relief, the alert warnings in her cockpit vanished as the unknowns scattered, with Darian and his GuAIZ sending the enemy scattering with well-aimed shots. "Fall back! Blaster Team will take it from here!"

"R-roger!" Houjo said. "Darry! Are you okay?"

"Fine," Darry said. "Just very rattled."

On the other side of the combat zone, Aleiya's CGUE danced through space, the crisscrossing 28mm solid tracer rounds a contrasting wave against the single beam shots of the unknowns. One of them approached close in a high-speed slash, only for the blade to glance off the CGUE Assault's handheld shield as Aleiya positioned it underneath her opponent's strike with practiced accuracy. The second unknown, however, had timed its strike well, and just as the first target retreated outside of Aleiya's melee range, the second thrust its sword straight at her unit. The blow glanced off the CGUE Assault's chest armour, adding one more notch to a growing collection of small scrapes and damages that Aleiya's unit had quickly acquired since the start of the combat.

Aleiya glanced at the tactical map. As long as she was keeping these two here, her own subordinates, together with Darian's team, should be able to keep the unknowns from progressing any further.

"…alberd Two… lberd Leader," Genan's voice, mired in static, filtered through the team channel. "Watch out! The speed and manoeuvrability of these units are just like that of the GINN High Maneuver Type!"

Aleiya had certainly noticed her opponents' abilities, and their pilots' astonishing level of skill, but something in Genan's sentence caused something to click in her mind. "Halberd Leader to all units. Assume anti-dogfighting tactics when fighting these guys; whatever you do, don't challenge them in their area of expertise! Hang back and play the ranged game!"

Seven voices replied. "Roger!"

"This is _Ironheart_ to all forces. We have made contact with the vessel; it's currently under our protection. We'll enter the battlezone to provide anti-fighter support!"

Just as Aleiya's heart lifted at the possibility of superior firepower, the unknowns pulled back, and retreated just as quickly as they had engaged the _Ironheart's _mobile suits in a dizzying melee, the glow of their thrusters mixing into the backdrop of stars in less than a minute.

"What the…" Genan said. "That ended way too abruptly!"

Aleiya, despite the sense of annoyance at an unfinished battle lingering in her heart, heaved a sigh of relief. "You'll appreciate it, Genan, when we get back to the _Ironheart_."

**CE 73 June 11****th****, ZAFT ****Nazca-class destroyer [ZSFC-L2-P032] **_**Ironheart**_**, Patrol Route A7D2, Lagrange Point 2 **

**11 47**

Aleiya, dressed in her ZAFT uniform, was en route to the main briefing room, when she encountered Commander Darian Forsseseur. "You've been called too?"

"Seems like the Captain wants his most senior staff on hand," Darian mused. "I wonder what's in store for us."

"The capabilities of our enemies worry me," Aleiya replied. "Those unknowns are probably a modernized GINN variant based off the GINN High Maneuver Type, and are capable of using beam weaponry. Speed and manoeuvrability are their playing fields; they're interceptors and dogfighters, but lack the punch of dedicated anti-ship teams, and are ill-suited to assault hardened targets without the use of external, probably heavy equipment that would remove or hamper their innate strengths."

"The rifle is a cut-down version of the GuAIZ R's rifle, likely not in production with ZAFT, but more than enough for their dogfighting needs. The sword they use, unlike ZAFT's multipurpose variant, is optimized for their speed-based design, as it is shaped in such a manner to be more suited for flyby slashes and quick movements; stabs can be used, but are ineffective unless against a weak point. Blocking is not recommended, as the blade's small width means that the user has to exert more force, especially against an opponent using the standard ZAFT sword. Against beam sabres and the like, however, the lightweight blade would be ideal as a cheaper and more cost-effective measure."

"People, even Coordinators working as mercenaries, aren't usually able to bring out the potential of these machines without experience and training. Those pilots we've fought were no scrubs," Darian said, as Aleiya fell silent. "I saw their manoeuvres. They were clever, precise, and most of all… they was deadly. The intention to kill was there. Those pilots were no mere mercenaries; I know a combatant well-versed in ZAFT tactics when I see one. Those seven were exactly that.

Aleiya sighed. "With the average skill of our pilots now, we can only fight effectively by matching numbers with numbers. Given our current level of military strength, that's a guaranteed recipe for disaster if enemies of considerable skill appear. Especially if they're well-versed in ZAFT tactics..."

Both Aleiya and Darian entered the briefing room at the same time. Apart from Captain Marcos Viendi and the _Ironheart's_ XO, Commander Nana Sette, there were four security personnel, and seated at the table was another man whom Aleiya couldn't recognize. His ragged look and tired eyes, however, left little doubt that he was the pilot of the ship that they had rescued.

"Just in time, Aleiya, Darian," Captain Viendi said. "Please, have a seat. Well," he gestured at the unnamed man. "Kindly begin your recounting."

The man's eyes darted around, sizing up the ZAFT personnel before continuing. "My name's Rathus Tess. I come from Copernicus Crater… I work there as a team manager for the city's engineering crews in charge of environmental systems."

"It was the 6th of June when I first saw the new group of people assigned to my team. They were unskilled, but fast learners. They said they were Coordinators who were once ZAFT soldiers, but had left the service and the nation after the war and were now living on Copernicus. Naturally, I taught them everything they needed to know."

Rathus rubbed his temples. "I didn't know they were using me to gain access to restricted areas! A day ago, they stole my ID card and broke into one of the system control rooms… and… and…"

"…And?" Nana prompted.

"I went looking for them as soon as I found out my card was missing, of course. My old team had just been sent to another lunar city prior to the new team's arrival, so my interaction on the job with other people were largely limited to these men. One of the security personnel had phoned me to warn me that one of them had gained access to my room with a key card. He matched the video feed with the profile, and told me who it was." Rathus sighed, running a trembling hand through his unkempt hair.

"When I reached the systems room, I saw the supervisor on the floor, begging them to spare him. Those men who held the supervisor hostage… they used to be part of my team… they were carrying pistols! They forced the personnel to extract map data for all of Copernicus's important environmental routes and systems for them! And once they were done, they shot them!"

"… How did you avoid detection?" Captain Viendi asked. "Was it an external feed?"

"The systems control room is quite large. I entered from the back door, just in time to see them initiate the takeover." Rathus sighed. "I… I hid under a console… and didn't move until they had all left the room…"

"What about security footage?" Darian asked. "Something like this…"

"Them being caught on video opening my room was their mistake. The cameras for the routes leading to the control room and the room itself were all disabled."

"What happened after?" Aleiya asked.

"I had their profiles with me, but they've since went underground." Rathus said. "Because so little was known about them, the police was having trouble keeping track of them just by civilian ID alone. I was going to hand their profiles over to the police… when… when…"

"… when?" Captain Viendi said.

Rathus cleared his throat. "I intended to go straight to my superiors, of course… but then… they started their hunt for me… and now I am here."

"I see." Captain Viendi said. "Well, ZAFT will guarantee you full protection as long as you are on this vessel. As a witness to one of their acts, you can be sure we will lend you all the aid we can."

Aleiya leaned towards Darian. "Not like we have a choice," Aleiya murmured. "Those pilots will shred the Lunar Cities Defence Force with or without anti-ship weapons."

Captain Viendi looked at Aleiya, but said nothing. "Well, Mister Tess, I just need you to tell me one more thing. The environment systems and map data… do you know what they intend to do with it?"

Rathus gulped. "I think you're all aware of the Solar System Trade Summit coming up on the 15th of June…"

Darian clenched his fists. "Oh hell, no."

"They intend to initiate a terror attack on the summit," Rathus said. "They data they downloaded were in regards to the air recycling and atmosphere management system. With that data, they can saturate the entire city in deadly toxins in less than six hours, much less a single summit building. Or shut off the air supply for long enough to asphyxiate everyone in the building."

_**Afterword:**__ Well, this is a new arc, dealing with ZAFT's tangle with the terrorists that would go on to spark the Break the World Incident. While it does not have any actual counterpart in the official CE history, I felt that such an event would lend greatly as to how the CE-verse dealt with a hostile and volatile situation in the few months leading up to the Second Bloody Valentine War._


	22. Chapter 22: Acute Countdown

_**Author's Note:**_

_This fanfic is to write upon some of the events in Gundam SEED and SEED Destiny that are not touched upon or mentioned in-series, but their dates are listed on GundamWikia and are thus treated as part of canon. They are therefore based upon actual happenings in the Cosmic Era universe, but the events within them are open to interpretation. This fanfic is also an attempt at showcasing a "what-if" of all sides involved in the wars, and how some of the events within the show might have come to be._

**Gundam SEED: Tales of the Cosmic Era**

**Chapter 22: Acute Countdown**

**CE 73 June 12****th****, ZAFT **_**Nazca**_**-class destroyer [ZSFC-L2-P032] **_**Ironheart**_**, Patrol Route A7D2, Lagrange Point 2 **

**06 17**

Aleiya twisted in her bed. Ever since ZAFT High Command had authorized them for participation, including the new pilots, regardless of how much piloting experience they had, the mobile suits pilots had been on a two-person guard shift every twelve hours, ready for immediate sortie. Yesterday night had been Darry and her, and Aleiya had used everything at her disposal to teach Darry that fighting in a mobile suit did not entail rushing into combat most of the time.

Unless, of course, one used the proper equipment.

With Darian and his wingman taking over her shift, Aleiya had wolfed down a quick breakfast and returned to her bunk. Taking off her uniform and skirt was as far as she got, before the need for sleep had overwhelmed her.

Now, however, she tossed and turned in her bed restrains, willing her mind to empty itself. The words of Rathus Tess, information from ZAFT High Command, and the few words she had exchanged with the unknowns all appeared at the forefront of her mind, keeping her awake.

Command had been thankfully quick with the return data; it took them less than two hours for them to analyse and give a concrete answer. The enemy was using GINN High Maneuver Type IIs, a GINN HMT variant that entered limited production during the end-days of the Bloody Valentine War. Only forty-eight units were ever completed, with six of them being GINN HMT conversions. Of the forty-eight, eight remained with ZAFT in various facilities, six were confirmed destroyed in combat, and the other thirty-six were unaccounted for in the chaos caused by the firing of Genesis.

Aleiya supposed that she could at least add seven more to the list of accounted.

Someone at ZAFT command had been smart enough to also send over a list of the GINN HMT Type IIs' ID codes, and more importantly, anyone who had piloted one before. Some of the pilots were accounted for in one way or another, but others had been listed as MIA, or had "left the force"; those were likely the ones who were responsible for this latest farce.

Aleiya buried her face in her pillow, attempting to sleep. The temperature was right, the lighting was non-existent, and the room was almost noiseless. Yet within her mind, the cacophony of information was as loud as a full-blown parade.

While Aleiya was being tormented by her own inner thoughts, Captain Marcos Viendi and Commander Nana Sette were both on the bridge, planning their next course.

"It certainly complicates things, since we're not allowed within tactical range of Copernicus," Nana mused, tapping the liquid-display panels of the tactical map display. The table-shaped device displayed their trajectories, one heading back to ZAFT as planned, and one more that would have taken them straight into Copernicus territory.

"It can't be helped, Nana," Marcos replied. "The lunar cities' authorities have good reason to be wary of our presence. Even after we've warned them about the attack, they've no reason to allow us in; the Solar System Trade Summit is technically a neutral event that the militaries of the PLANTs and Earth nations have no business poking their noses into. For the trade-heavy Lunar Settlement Council, the less they're seen with a supernation's military force, the better."

Nana sighed. "This politicking will end them if they continue."

Captain Viendi shrugged. "Look on the bright side. If we had parked the _Ironheart_ near Copernicus, we could be easily ambushed by the enemy's mobile suit force. Out here, anything coming in can be seen for thousands of kilometres around."

"Still, I wonder what ZAFT is going to do about this," Nana said. "It's not like we'll be unaffected; Asimov Design Bureau, Maius Military Industries and the other big players of the PLANTs' industries are going to be there as well. Surely ZAFT will not leave them to hang."

"It's not 'if', Nana," Captain Viendi said. "It's 'how'."

**CE 73 June 12****th****, ? ?, ?, Copernicus**

**? ?**

The man watching the television made a sound of discontent. "Damned bastard!"

"What's wrong?"

The man gestured at the screen. "Everything! We were supposed to catch them unawares! Thanks to that bastard escaping, now everyone is on high alert!"

The first man remained unconcerned. "It can still be done. That man knows how and when we'll strike, but not from where. Copernicus's guards can hardly be called competent. Even if they're posted at all the right places, I doubt they'll put up much of a fight."

"What about the ZAFT force parked somewhere off Luna?" another voice asked.

"We can take them. I'll think of a plan to lure in their mobile suits, and finish them in one fell swoop."

"Are they that easy to kill off?"

One of them smirked. "Only half of them have any semblance of skill, and they're not that great themselves. We'll be able to easily handle them."

A wave of short laughter spread around. "Greth's Crusaders are unbeatable." One of them said. "These guys are going to be fodder!"

"For our success, gentlemen. This is the beginning of our campaign of retribution."

**CE 73 June 14****th****, ZAFT ****Nazca-class destroyer [ZSFC-L2-P032] **_**Ironheart**_**, Patrol Route A7D2, Lagrange Point 2 **

**13 57**

"… And?" Aleiya asked.

"And that's everything told to us," Marcos said. "Hold position, and do not, unless under direct attack, deploy in force." He rubbed his temples. "Looks like we've got no chance to interfere with this."

"But… but at this rate…" Rathus stammered. "Those insurgents are going to achieve their goals! Please, Captain, you have to do somet-"

"Be that as may be, I cannot simply move my ship close." Marcos activated the bridge's tactical display, bringing up the positions of the various ships sighted around Lunar orbit. "See those yellow markers positioned three-quarters our distance away from Copernicus? Those are OMNI warships. Awfully nearby for them, considering that their organization has no place in a trade summit. And those blue markers? They're ships and mobile suits of the Lunar Cities Defence Force. One wrong move, and they'll have us at gunpoint, and that's not counting their technical status as defence partners of OMNI."

"But this is a threat to the entire city!" Rathus exclaimed. "If they succeed in their attack, it's not just the delegates who're going to get affected; if the biological agents they're using get flushed out into the major pipe-ways, the entire city is going to die!"

"My decision is final," Marcos said, averting his eyes. "I cannot move this ship, not without endangering everyone onboard to a hostile situation. We're soldiers, not glory-seekers."

Rathus swallowed hard, trying to keep his voice level. "Then… can I at least be allowed to return to the city?"

"For?" Marcos asked.

"At least… I can stall them if… no, once they initiate their takeover of the environmental systems." Rathus clasped both hands together. "This matter is known, right? I don't think they'll be able to kill me if I can get back to my home ground, the control rooms of Copernicus' environmental systems."

"You might be captured and locked up as a potential collaborator." Darian said.

"I… I can take the risk," Rathus said. "It's a worthwhile price."

"Very well. Gather your things; we'll return you to your ship." Marcos said. "I wish you all the best."

As Rathus left, Aleiya turned towards Marcos. "Are you really letting him go, Captain?"

"Thanks to his warning, all who are involved are on high alert. It's the next best situation one could ask for." He put on his Captain's headdress. "And the appearance of the unknown's mobile suits… GINN variants, and to add to that, variants never released for foreign production… it worries me. Best to not get close to the city if… no, when they attack. The Earth Alliance has been quite edgy as of recently."

"Fighting against our former comrades…" Darian remarked. "A bitter pill to swallow."

"Hmm." Marcos said. "Nana," he asked, turning to his second-in-command. "What do you think of Mr. Tess' vessel?"

"Spacious, to say the least," Nana replied levelly, even as the corners of her mouth curled up. "Enough to fit two mobile suits the likes of the CGUE or GuAIZ inside."

Aleiya arched an eyebrow. "What's this about?"

"You really didn't think ZAFT would sit back, did you?" Marcos said, a grin tugging at the corners of his mouth. "These are our second set of orders; they just came in before this meeting, so I had Nana work on it while we prodded Mr. Tess to see where his obligations were. Infiltrate Copernicus; find the mobile suits and destroy them. If you can assure the obliteration or retrieval of their black boxes, even better." Marcos sat back into his chair. "In a way, Mr. Tess is giving us a great help; it might be for the best that I didn't have to force him into the role of bringing us back. He can't claim violations of rights if he doesn't know that they might have been broken in the first place."

"This…" Darian said, peering over Nana's shoulders to look at her console. "Woah. You've really done it now… you even have the fastest approach vector of the _Ironheart_ from here to Copernicus!"

"That's only in a worst-case scenario," Marcos replied. "It would be supremely unpleasant if we had to jump in without making our case clear, and get shot up for trying to do a good deed."

"When do we move out?" Aleiya asked.

"As soon as you can; pick someone to go with you, but only from your own team." Marcos said. "Preferably while Mr. Tess is still packing his things. And not near a viewport. I doubt he's much of an experienced ship-handler; enough, at least, to not detect the extra weight just by manoeuvring the craft."

"How do we get off at Copernicus?" Darian asked. "His ship ID is that of a public freighter's, right?"

"The technicians have already made the necessary preparations. Luckily, Mr. Tess appears to have stolen the ship in his mad bid to escape. We've already emptied out his containers… not that there was much inside in the first place, and we'll put two mobile suits inside. As for how to get off… well, I'd just say to get creative."

"Then it's me and Genan, then," Aleiya said. "No sense in bringing rookies on a surgical mission."

"Very well." Marcos said. "Commence mission!"

**CE 73 June 14****th****, light freighter **_**Work Happy**_**, en route to Copernicus **

**14 42**

Genan tapped his controls as the rear panels of the container fell off, revealing a slowly receding lunar landscape. At less than 25 meters off the ground, Tess' freighter was about to enter a Copernicus dock in a minute's time, and Aleiya doubted that they would be of much use once in a sealed environment.

Besides, Aleiya had reasoned, the terrorists would not be stupid enough to hide their mobile suits in a place easily reachable by local law enforcement… or would they?

Genan pressed a button, and the jury-rigged battery-powered clamps attached to his mobile suit released their grip from makeshift cables attached to the inside of the container, allowing his CGUE to drift out as micro-thrusters fired for less than a fraction of a second to give the inert mobile suit the speed difference needed to leave the container. Just four meters away, Aleiya's CGUE Assault drifted into view, the moving lunar surface underneath her helping to blend her gray mobile suit into the background. Anyone looking from the top would only see two gray masses.

From all around them, security troopers of the _Ironheart_ emerged from the containers, making for the ground.

The two mobile suits slowly manoeuvred into standing position, hidden behind a rock outcropping. Aleiya watched as Tess' freighter entered the port, and the heavy blast doors closed. Her mobile suit, however, still had a wireless link to the freighter's external cameras, and she watched with resignation as members of the Copernicus law enforcement surrounded the shuttle, before terminating the connection.

"Well, that went well." Genan remarked.

"Could be better if he didn't get caught in a textbook situation," Aleiya sighed through the mobile suit's comms. Around her, thirty-nine other people gathered, the troopers all looking as though they were dressed for war. "All of you have the map on your display as well, right?"

"We do," Sergeant Melinda Hausen said, shouldering her own pack. "Nearest entry is a service lock 200 meters from our current position."

The platoon of troopers bounded across the landscape, quickly covering the ground in-between. Reducing their target size didn't mean that they were invisible, just harder to detect. And if they were spotted, pulverising them would be easy.

The airlock opened easily enough, the simple electronic lock easily falling prey to ZAFT's ever-reliable lockbreaker. The troops filed in quickly, and the lock closed, leaving nothing but small footprints in the cluttered landscape of the lunar ground.

Sergeant Melinda Hausen took charge from here. "Based on our current information, we can expect the enemy's mobile suits to be near large-scale holding areas. I've already received an expanded map from ZAFTCOM, based on data from the first war, and the areas that are marked out are the suspicious zones. We'll be checking them one by one."

"Some of these are already disused." Genan said, looking at the map on his display. "They might be hard-sealed."

"Not a problem for us," Melinda said, looking at another trooper in the back with a rucksack full of E-7 block explosives. "If the enemy's gone and made one of them their base, however, it'll be a gold mine for us."

"Understood." Aleiya said. "Holler if you need help."

"Thanks," Melinda said, cutting the connection.

"… So what do we do now?" Genan asked.

"We sharpen our senses," Aleiya answered, settling back into her pilot seat. "And wait for the prey to start running."

**CE 73 June 14****th****, Copernicus Bravo Sector service tunnels, Copernicus, Luna **

**14 52**

Sergeant Melinda Hausen inched along the grating, making sure to keep her noise level low. Behind here were five other people, all dressed for heavy combat, and all that was in-between them and a fully-lighted and bustling employees' corridor below was a metal grating that looked liable to creak if they so much as stepped a tad faster over it.

Getting past that obstacle, the fireteam quickly proceeded down the service shaft towards their first target, a cargo hold. Emerging, the six people spread out, checking the contents of each and every suspicious crate they could get their hands on in the darkened holding bay.

Around Copernicus, several ZAFT trooper teams were doing the same, seeking to destroy the GINNs used by the terrorists. While GINN variants in third-party uses were not uncommon, the objective this time was made more complicated by the fact that the enemy were using models that were not purpose-built for export, or decommissioned for public use. If that fact was made known, they would be facing a potentially sticky political situation.

One by one, her soldiers reported back. "Nothing on my side as well," Melinda said. "All teams, report status."

The replies were not uplifting, to say the least. No one had found anything.

Melinda gritted her teeth as she made for the next location. "All forces, continue your search! Don't rest until you find them!"

**CE 73 June 14****th****, ?, ?, Copernicus, Luna **

**15 16**

Somewhere in Copernicus, a man was watching something on the small television in the darkened room, the video feed coming from a hacked security camera that he had accessed with his datapad. His subject of interest, a man named Rathus Tess, was currently opposing vehemently to being locked up as a precautionary measure. For all the good his words were, though, the Copernicus police personnel remained unmoved.

"Still watching that feed?" the man behind him remarked.

"Heh, idealistic idiot," the man remarked. "We've had enough time to plant the required evidence on him. It'll take nothing less than an act of god to get him out now."

The first man simply shrugged. "Don't get too relaxed now."

The two resumed whatever they were doing, until one of their cellphones rang. "Get a message out to our boys," the caller said, the terse tone of his voice unmistakable. "Tell them to be on guard."

"What for?"

"Tell them to watch out. Something's not right."

**CE 73 June 14****th****, Copernicus Bravo Sector Exterior Warehouses Block B4, Copernicus, Luna **

**16 32**

A beam of light scythed through the dust cloud as Melinda proceeded with her search operations, stepping through the jagged remains of the door and into the abandoned warehouse. The ZAFT infantry filed into the room and quickly took up positions, all of them dressed in heavily-armoured exo-operations gear. After over two hours of creeping and crawling over Copernicus' various maintenance paths, she'd finally found _something_.

"Mother of… Sergeant, take a look at this," one of her men said.

Melinda walked over, the magnetic locks on her exo-suit's boots doing their job of keeping her anchored onto the floor. In order to save electricity, it was common for space-based cities to shut off all power supply to an unused grid or location. "What do we have here?"

"The classic. H24ar, nerve agent. Colorless, odourless gas, highly destabilizing and degrading to nerve ends and cell receptors, kills within two hours, and will make you look completely horrifying while doing so; people have been known to die from the seizures before the drug could kill them." The sergeant, who had a medic's armband, tapped one of the heavy-duty hard plastic canisters, bringing Melinda's attention to the industrial warning label taped to it. "It's also used as a component for some anaesthetic drugs, amongst other things, and in microscopic amounts is virtually harmless. However, in any dosage over one milligram per cubic centimetre of air, death is assured to any involved parties."

Melinda walked around the batch of containers. "These were shipped from Mizauld City, a neighbouring lunar location. According to information, this warehouse was supposed to be deserted." She looked around those of her squad near the canisters. "We can presume this to be products intercepted by non-legal entities."

"Sergeant," another soldier called out from the far side of the warehouse. "I think we found what we were looking for."

Leaving her soldiers to secure and beacon-mark the canisters, she walked over to the soldier. Her rifle's torchlight swept over a dark metal surface, and as she watched, her light source revealed the lines and contours of a GINN's leg, side skirt, and arm, ending in its iconic head. Its colours were black and purple; no doubt about it, Melinda had hit jackpot.

Melinda gave a low whistle. "How many of them are there?"

"Two," said a soldier, emerging from behind the frame that held the GINN High Maneuver Type-II down. "There's one more behind this."

"Hot damn," Melinda remarked. "They could run a small assault with these things-"

"Ma'am! The second entrance on the far end is opening!" one of her subordinates exclaimed.

"Hide!" Melinda gestured, leaping towards the closest mobile suit for cover. The troopers cut their lights, plunging the area back into total darkness.

Bracing against the flatbed frame that the mobile suit was lying on, she waited, feeling the vibrations of another group of people, magnetic boots active, trooping towards her squad's position.

Melinda drew a deep breath. She unsheathed her combat knife, and counted to three.

"Troopers! Engage!"

**CE 73 June 14****th****, ?, ?, Copernicus, Luna **

**16 37**

"Shit!" The first man exclaimed. "Cozun? Answer me!"

The other man behind the first turned around. "What happened to Cozun's team?"

"Cozun was silenced. I heard some gunfire from Meddan's coms when I switched channels, but then that went silent too." He wrenched his headset off. "How about you?"

"Six out of nine squads have made contact with their weapons caches," the second man replied. "Lenard's still on his way. Godard says that his team nearly ran into a ZAFT security squad; they're on a detour route."

"Dammit," the first man replied. "We were so close!"

"Not all is lost," the second man replied. "Let's wait for the commander to get back to us." He snatched up a pistol lying on the table. "Meanwhile, we have a few dignitaries to off. Tell everyone to get their mobile suits up! We're putting the plan in motion now!"

**CE 73 June 14****th****, Copernicus Luna Outskirts Bravo Sector, Copernicus, Luna **

**16 43**

"Jack-knife to Halberd Leader, the torch has been lit. I repeat, the torch has been lit!"

Aleiya switched her comms to a more secure setting. "Halberd Leader to Jack-knife, copy. Do you require assistance?"

"None needed," Melinda replied, the telltale sign of signal inteference marring her voice with a harsh, chaotic static. "But watch the outside. I have reports that my other teams didn't manage to find and secure enemy weapon caches. Success rate is only at 30% and less; be advised that the enemy will have mobile suit capability."

"Roger Jack-knife, Halberd Leader out."

Genan sighed. "Man, this is going south faster than a meteorite."

"We sit tight," Aleiya replied. "Until we have an enemy MS sitting right on top-"

A shrill warning siren sounded out as the CGUE Assault's visual identification system zoomed in on several streaks of light emerging from all over Copernicus' Bravo Sector, a total of seventeen of them. Aleiya narrowed her eyes as she watched the GINN High Maneuver Type IIs emerge into space… and form up to head straight for the inner city. Two split off towards a cluster of warehouse, beam rifles up and ready.

Aleiya hurriedly keyed in combat settings as she gave her orders. "Halberd Leader to Halberd Two, full combat speed! We can't let them hit our allies! Jack-knife, secure what you have, and complete your original mission on the mobile suits that are currently in your possession!"

The powerful engines of the CGUE Assault's main thrusters lighted up as it left the lunar surface, Genan's CGUE following close behind. The two mobile suits leapt forward as their pilots squeezed every drop of speed out of them, willing their machines to reach their enemies before their allies paid for with their lives.

The first GINN High Maneuver Type II dodged as a stream of 76mm cannon fire slashed through space; the Type-II returned fire with a green blast, and both Genan and Aleiya split their approach, the CGUE Assault coming in low and fast, and the CGUE sending a hail of fire towards the two GINNs.

Melinda watched her men work on the mobile suits as Aleiya and Genan engaged the two Type IIs somewhere outside the hangar where she was. "Have you found the black-box for those two units yet?"

"I'm not hopeful, ma'am," one of her men replied. "It's not in the indicated location; I think it might have been removed. Same goes for the other mobile suit."

Melinda cursed silently, and directed her attention towards the other team in possession of two more Type IIs. "Jack-knife to Carver, how's your side?"

"We can't find any black boxes as well, but we're ready," the reply came. "We've marked the chemical canisters… in about a few minutes the Lunar Cities Defence Force is going to be all over these warehouses. We'll be long gone by then."

"See you back on the _Ironheart_, Carver. Jack-knife to all teams, our mission is done. All teams free of Phase 2 of the plan should prepare for Phase 3. Jack-knife and Carver will join you shortly."

Turning to the space above her, Melinda watched as the four mobile suits weaved around each other, getting further and further away from their location. In the distance, glimmers of light appeared; the OMNI security fleet was launching its own mobile suits, and the Lunar Cities Defence Force was responding to the sudden conflict as well.

With the vastness of space over her head, sprinkled with the lights of distant stars, Melinda had never felt so small then. But she had her own tasks to attend to, one that would ensure that if ZAFT needed to evacuate this location quickly, at least no one could glean anything from the corpses left behind, be they human or metal.

**CE 73 June 14****th****, Above Copernicus Luna Central, Copernicus, Luna **

**16 54**

Metal struck the reinforced surfaces of Copernicus' outer protective hull, as Aleiya set up a withering hail of fire in all directions that promised a messy death to anything caught within it. The CGUE Assault's guns blazed; with two shoulder-mounted heavy vulcans, two 28mm vulcans attached to the CGUE's arm-mounted shields, as well as two handheld rifles, any of the GINN High Maneuver Type IIs within range were kept dancing as Aleiya sent short, controlled bursts of fire to her sides and rear, while chasing down another Type II.

The insurgent in front of her twisted and turned his mobile suit, narrowly avoiding her shots as he sought refuge in the heavy-duty access-ways and tunnels winding through the surface of Copernicus. Stopping behind an open service hatch, the GINN watched as the CGUE Assault passed overhead, before speeding upwards and forward, sword out, rifle spitting green death.

Aleiya clenched her teeth as the CGUE Assault turned to its left to avoid the beam shots, and its shoulder-mounted vulcans swivelled to face its rear adversary. The GINN sped underneath her unit to avoid the vulcans' arc of fire, and was rewarded with a hail of 28mm and 76mm HE rounds from her arm-mounted shield vulcans and handheld rifles, as Aleiya directed her fire downwards.

The GINN shuddered as the rounds tore through its lightweight armour, and the repeated impacts forced it to crash into the lunar surface, causing the already-damaged mobile suit to shatter into fragments and flashes of fire. The tumbling remains of the unit impacted into an incline on the lunar surface, and a second, much larger explosion seconds later sealed the fate of the pilot. Aleiya had no time to issue a warning to the hostiles or appreciate her own skills, however, as two GINN High Maneuver Type IIs immediately vectored towards her, zigzagging across the empty space to throw off her aim.

"Halberd Two!" Aleiya exclaimed, her vision a series of blurs as she fought to keep the CGUE Assault from crashing into the man-made structures on Copernicus' surface, her mobile suit dodging fire without cutting speed. "Status!"

"Still alive!" Genan said, his CGUE sweeping into the space between two space traffic control towers, left shoulder thruster flaring, and kicking off the ground to turn his mobile suit around the corner without cutting speed.

One of the towers was not occupied, the interior of its control centre darkened, but the other one was operational, and Genan winced as a stray beam shot turned the pressurized interior of the control tower's observation deck into a firestorm. Those who weren't immolated immediately were tossed out of the beam shot's exit hole in a maelstrom of escaping air; a lucky few had space suits, but the vast majority of them had been dressed in standard clothes and uniforms.

Crouching lower, Genan's mobile suit pushed off the lunar surface again, the added power from its thrusters pushing it to high Gs. Struggling to keep focused, Genan forced the CGUE's legs to kick backwards, using its feet rocket thrusters to let it face its adversaries much faster, who were now below it.

The lead GINN High Maneuver Type II could withstand 28mm rounds for a short while, but the burst of 76mm HE rounds from the CGUE's rifle that followed smashed into the GINN's left leg, destroying most of it and severing it at the joint. Genan smashed into the GINN with its shield, and sent it into the ground with a vicious kick with armour plates, wires, and other attached components being flung in all directions by the impact.

The blow wasn't fatal, however, and Genan cursed as the Type II's wingmate rushed into close-combat, preventing him from finishing his job. "Goddamned," he cursed, swiping at his opponent with the CGUE's heavy sword, "there has to be a way to finish this quickly!"

"Keep them coming one by one!" Aleiya replied. "Handle those in front of you; the _Ironheart_ and its reinforcements will be arriving soon! We'll let OMNI and the LCDF handle those on their side!"

Genan spared a glance towards the tactical map. "OMNI's still a ways off, and the LCDF are getting their asses kicked! We need to prevent them from entering the city!"

Aleiya swore in Russian, something she hadn't done for a long time, as she sped past her current opponents, gunning for four Type IIs that were trying to force a large service hatch open. "Halberd Leader to Halberd Two, you're going to have to cope alone for a while! I'm going in!"

Two of the four GINNs engaged their thrusters, turning to face Aleiya even as the other two finally managed to get the hatch to open. Aleiya's breath froze as she realized that none of them had brought their canisters of poison gas along; either they had already planted it, or they were planning to kill the delegates outright.

"Halberd Two to Halberd Leader, be advised that all insurgent forces are converging on your location!"

Aleiya caught sight of the tactical map from the corner of her eye; the enemy units were disengaging from all over the place, and were heading towards the open hatch. From behind, OMNI and LCDF units chased them, but none could match the insurgents' speed.

Aleiya intended to stop them here. The shoulder thrusters of her CGUE Assault flared, and the feet of her mobile suit hit the metal decks that were Copernicus' "roof"; its guns aligned themselves, and in less than a second, the two GINNs rushing her unit found themselves facing a storm of lead, as Aleiya set up the biggest display of saturation fire not seen since the conclusion of the Bloody Valentine War.

The second Type II was fortunate enough to veer out of the lead storm in time. The first GINN, however, took the rounds head-on, the mixture of 28mm and 76mm blowing the GINN apart as they tore through the mobile suit. The flaming wreck cruised over the CGUE Assault's head, casting a brief, almost menacing glow over its features, as it turned to face the two GINNs at the hatch, one of which was now also coming for her.

Aleiya's coms crackled to life, heavy static marring the voice in it. "This'll be the last time you'll get in our way!"

"I'll get in your way as many times as I need to," Aleiya replied, not taking her hands off the controls to re-adjust the signals systems. The CGUE Assault pointed its guns forward, barrels spinning up, ready to spit death at a moment's notice. "We don't need you to ruin ZAFT's name! Not here! Not now!"

"We're bringing glory back to ZAFT," the voice hissed. The GINN High Maneuver Type II unsheathed its sword as it ducked behind a building to block her aim; even as Aleiya prepared to approach, the remaining machines from all over Copernicus swarmed through the service hatch. "Those who foolishly abide by the rules of this age will perish. Patrick Zala knew what was in store for us if ZAFT did not win; ignorant moderates like you are only prolonging the inevitable!"

The GINN retreated, thrusters flaring as it flew up, dodging a burst of fire from Aleiya's MS. "Today's deaths will be our address to the world, ZAFT pilot! You may have forgotten the Bloody Valentine Incident, as have the rest of the degenerates running ZAFT now, but we remember! And we will make ZAFT remember! And when it does, we shall join the new ZAFT in bringing the Earth to heel!"

Aleiya gritted her teeth. "Not by a million years, you won't." The CGUE Assault rumbled as its own thrusters fired, the mobile suit lifting off the lunar surface and towards the open airlock. "All of you warmongering bastards can go back to hell!"

_**Afterword:**__ Continuation of the new mini-arc, dealing with ZAFT's tangle with the terrorists that would go on to spark the Break the World Incident. While it does not have any actual counterpart in the official CE history, I felt that such an event would lend greatly as to how the CE-verse dealt with a hostile and volatile situation in the few months leading up to the Second Bloody Valentine War._


	23. Chapter 23: Ghosts of Warriors Past

_**Author's Note:**_

_This fanfic is to write upon some of the events in Gundam SEED and SEED Destiny that are not touched upon or mentioned in-series, but their dates are listed on GundamWikia and are thus treated as part of canon. They are therefore based upon actual happenings in the Cosmic Era universe, but the events within them are open to interpretation. This fanfic is also an attempt at showcasing a "what-if" of all sides involved in the wars, and how some of the events within the show might have come to be._

**Gundam SEED: Tales of the Cosmic Era**

**Chapter 23: Ghosts of Warriors Past**

**CE 73 June 14****th****, ZAFT destroyer **_**Ironheart**_**, en route to Copernicus, Luna **

**17 01**

"It's quite audacious for you to request for permission to be allowed into Copernicus after all that's happened," the Copernicus official said. "One of them being unauthorized entry onto our territory-"

"I understand your words," Captain Marcos Viendi said, interrupting the man before he talked himself into a tirade. "Be that as may be, however, we have a duty to stop these insurgents."

"Because of aesthetics?" the official retorted. "We have GINNs in the Lunar Cities Defence Forces as well, Captain, having one or two insurgents running round with GINNs is not much of a big deal."

"Not for you, perhaps, sir," Marcos said. "But OMNI and ZAFT have people on official duties here, at this very moment. My undertaking is less to save your city, and more to ensure that we make a good appearance to OMNI by taking on these GINNs... considering the recent political situation between ZAFT and OMNI."

"You show your true colors," the official replied. "The LCDF can handle these… ah, insurgents well enough alone-"

"No. You cannot," Marcos said, cutting off the official mid-sentence. "In the early stages of the attack the insurgents engaged OMNI, LCDF, and ZAFT forces; of all three, your men have been shot to hell while trying to prevent access. You need OMNI and ZAFT's help for this. If you could make an exception for OMNI, you can make an exception for us. We can save this city first, and let the politicians discuss the trivialities later."

The official was about to fire back a reply when he stopped to listen to another transmission. With an expression not far from someone who's been forced to eat their words, he addressed Captain Marcos again. "Alright… I guess this is one of those times. Your forces are allowed to deploy through Bravo Sector. But don't go acting out of line. You're all subject to LCDF orders as of now. And don't bring your ship any closer than 1 500 kilometres from the city."

"Of course." Marcos set his captain's headdress onto his head as he closed the channel. "This is the _Ironheart_ to all ZAFT forces, the operation will now shift to variant plan B, Phase 2. Prepare for urban combat!"

**CE 73 June 14****th****, Copernicus Interior Central, Copernicus, Luna **

**17 11**

Sirens echoed through the streets of Copernicus as the Strike Dagger fell back onto a small building, a smoking hole punched through its chest, as the GINN High Maneuver Type II strode forward. Most of the civilians had been evacuated the moment combat had erupted above the subterranean lunar city; abandoned vehicles and dropped items adorned the streets, making the once-lively place look like a ghost town that had been abandoned for years.

Within minutes of gaining entrance into Copernicus, the insurgents had wiped out most of the Lunar Cities Defence Force units that had been stationed near the central accesses. Planted explosives had damaged the other airlocks; right now OMNI had been granted access from Delta Sector, and the _Ironheart_ was deploying its forces from Bravo Sector.

That left the insurgent to run amok around the central area of Copernicus. So far, a few attempts had been made to stem the GINNs' assault towards the centre of the city, where the delegates were, but the three LCDF attempts and one OMNI attack had been repelled. The OMNI and ZAFT units, which had deployed into the city as well, were spread out trying to catch the GINNs before they would get a clear shot in.

The GINN High Maneuver Type II that had felled the Strike Dagger was kneeling down, taking up a stable firing position, when a GuAIZ R stepped into view.

"Halberd Three here," Houjo said. "I-I have the enemy on sight!"

"Then fire, you dolt!" Genan said, the thrusters on his machine flaring.

Both Houjo and the insurgent fired at the same time, but the difference in experience was clear; Houjo's shot went wide, searing a red-hot line into a nearby building, while the insurgent's shot struck Houjo's unit dead-centre, the blast throwing it backwards; were it not for its shield, Houjo would have been cooked.

Genan's CGUE kicked off from the ground, leaving a footprint in the asphalt; it boosted through the streets to crash into the GINN High Maneuver Type II, the two mobile suits grappling with each other in melee combat.

Even as the two mobile suits pushed against each other, Genan's CGUE stuck its foot out; twisting it sideways, it struck its knee armour block into the GINN's right leg joint, essentially knocking its footing out from underneath it. Disengaging from the GINN, the CGUE brought its rifle to bear, and a cluster of rounds penetrated the GINN's midsection, silencing the mobile suit.

"Halberd Leader to all Halberds," Aleiya's voice came through. "What's the situation?"

"E-enemy wandered too far out," Houjo replied. "Halberd Two's g-got it covered."

Behind the two ZAFT units, twelve mobile suits of the LCDF were waiting, weapons at the ready. Most of them were pilots with no real combat experience; with outdated hardware factored into the equation, the only units that had a chance against the insurgents would be the ZAFT and OMNI teams.

"Fighter Leader here," a channel from the LCDF connected into the ZAFT all-band comms network. "We're here if you need to spread out a line."

"This is Blaster Leader to all forces," Darian's voice rang loud and clear on the coms. "Hold your current positions. OMNI forces have isolated a fleeing convoy, guarded by three enemy mobile suits that are headed for an environment control plant; looks like there are people on the ground working for the insurgents as well. We'll leave OMNI and the other LCDF forces to their chase, and concentrate on evicting these guys from the city.

"Fine by me," Aleiya replied. "We're going to try and dislodge them from this space and into the void above, people. Let's get to work!"

The ZAFT and LCDF mobile suits charged. "Give me a good spread, Halberd-4," Aleiya said, as her CGUE Assault, sans all armaments but its armour plates, a rifle and a sword, landed from a boosted jump, Darry's GuAIZ-R close behind. "Take your sharpshooting seriously. I don't have much in the way of evasion; not within the city, anyways. Take them out when they pop up to shoot me."

"Wouldn't have it any other way, ma'am," Darry said. "I'm more than enough to-"

No sooner had Darry spoke than a GINN High Maneuver Type-II stepped into their sights. Within a second it had raised its rifle and snapped off a single shot; Aleiya's CGUE Assault ducked, while the less-experienced Darry held his ground and returned fire.

The beam shot from Darry pierced through the air above the GINN High Maneuver Type-II, while his own GuAIZ R was awash in blinding green light from the beam shot that splashed against his shield. Aleiya was already in motion, her CGUE Assault moving under the crossfire, boosters blazing. Cars flipped and debris blew away from the force her mobile suit's rocket thrusters exerted on their surroundings, as the CGUE Assault came in fast and low, and Aleiya impaled her target with a single stroke.

That was when she saw the second GINN High Maneuver Type II, rifle raised, in a prime position to perforate both his comrade, which currently served as an impromptu obstacle, and Aleiya's unit, which was stuck in a position where she couldn't regain balance quickly enough.

A second beam flashed past Aleiya's sight, close enough to heat up the hull of her mobile suit, the shot striking the insurgent GINN squarely in the torso. Darry's GuAIZ R still had its rifle in firing position, the air around its barrel shimmering as Aleiya wrenched the insurgent unit off her blade. "Good shot. Not bad."

Even through the tiny video feed, Darry's irritating grin was evident. "I aim to please, cap'n."

"Keep it that way," Aleiya said. "Halberd Leader to all forces! Status report!"

"Blaster Leader here," Darian replied. "We're hammering away at them even now, and they have few mobile suits left." The sound of another blast echoed throughout the evacuated streets. "Unfortunately, none of them seem to have any intention of being taken alive."

"Continue to prioritize attrition over capture," Aleiya said. "Once the enemy count has been reduced to five or less, then we'll have the leisure to pick and choose who we want alive. There're too many variables here to risk a capture operation."

"Understood," Darian replied. "Blaster out."

A new feed cut into the channel just as Darian closed his link. "This is a status update from Seeker Leader, of the OMNI task force currently pursuing the enemy. We have managed to block them off from the environment control centres and have successfully chased them back upside to the lunar surface; we're currently engaged in combat with them. The dignitaries have also been secured."

"Does that mean that we get to go all weapons free?" Darry asked.

"Don't be an idiot," Genan said. "This is still a non-ZAFT territory! Don't go smashing things up on a whim!"

Aleiya's CGUE Assault held up its hand, signalling for Darry to stop, as the loud whine of full-powered thrusters filled the air, and several streaks of exhaust reached towards Copernicus' roof, aiming for the airlocks located there. "Halberd Leader to all forces, the insurgents are firing up their thrusters! They're going to make a break for it!"

Darry took aim and fired, the shot barely missing a GINN High Maneuver Type-II as it rocketed into the air, and vectored towards the barely-visible outline of the airlock, located on the roof of the underground city. Around it, other GINN units were doing the same, and the forces of ZAFT answered likewise, as eight different mobile suits boosted into the air, followed by eighteen Strike Daggers of the Lunar Cities Defense Force.

"Why did they all just leave?!" Houjou asked, her voice barely audible over the roaring that was resonating throughout her mobile suit's cockpit.

"They managed to get the dignitaries out from an underground route," Darian replied, his own GuAIZ pitching side-to-side as its powerful engines forced the heavy mobile suit through the air. "With the sabotage team stopped, they don't have any reason to stay here anymore. There's probably a ship waiting to pick them up out there!"

"Halberd Leader to Blaster Leader, take your guys and find that ship," Aleiya said. "In-between Halberd Team and the LCDF mobile suits, we'll be more than enough for these jokes."

"Got it," Darian said, as the ZAFT mobile suits entered the airlock and travelled through the tunnel that would take them to the surface doors. "But don't kill them all off before I come back!"

On the lunar surface, one of the heavy-duty blast doors heated up and shattered outwards in a mixture of twisted fragments and globules of molten alloy, as more than a dozen lights erupted from the opening, each one the thruster flare of a mobile suit spoiling for a fight. A few scattered shots came their way, and as the insurgents regrouped, Darian and his team broke away, leaving Aleiya and the LCDF to finish the battle.

The first kill of the battle went to the insurgents, as one of the last few Strike Daggers to emerge tried blocking a shot from a GINN High Maneuver Type-II, only for the high-powered beam to punch through its antiquated shield's coating, inner layers, and the Strike Dagger proper.

"This is Halberd Leader to all allied forces in the battlezone! Older mobile suits should take these guys three-to-one! Press them with a barrage if they attempt any assault manoeuvres! Do not engage them in a straight fight!"

Another Strike Dagger vanished in a gout of flame and broken debris as two High Maneuver Type-IIs swept in. The LCDF mobile suits scattered under a hail of beam fire, some taking cover behind lunar structures, others dodging desperately.

"We're just not fast enough!" Aleiya hissed. "Halberd 4! Keep on your toes! Halberd 2! Put 3 on back watch!"

Darry swore as he missed five shots in a row, his targeted GINN High Maneuver Type II coming around in a wide arc around the GuAIZ R. "Agile bastard!"

Aleiya's intention to rebuke Darry was lost within the next second as her CGUE Assault crossed swords with an insurgent, the two units slamming their solid blades together. "4! Forget the other guy!"

To Aleiya's relief, Darry took the cue, and while the insurgent's GINN High Maneuver Type II attempted to break away from the blade-lock, Darry's shot was faster. The GINN fell back, torso leaking coolant and oil, and a moment later the machine exploded.

"Got him!" Darry crowed, turning to another target. "Sorry to steal your kill, Leader."

"I don't think you understand the essence of combat yet if you're still saying that," Aleiya replied. "But keep up the good shooting!"

Darian's video feed flashed into view in a corner of Aleiya's HUD. "Blaster Leader here. I have visual on a ship. Looks like a refitted _Laurasia_-class, but it seems to be a drifting wreck!"

Aleiya frowned as she kicked an insurgent unit away, and pelted it with a hail of 76mm rounds from her rifle; the GINN took a few shots, but otherwise dodged enough of the attack to retreat behind an obstacle, much to Aleiya's chagrin. "What?!"

"It's not beam rounds," Darian replied. "Looks more like an inside job; planted HE, holed engines, probably the whole thing. I'm sure that's the ship though, because I'm not getting any number markings from the usual places, and there doesn't seem to be a black-box retrieval signal coming from it either."

"Roger that. We're calling off the search." Aleiya replied. "There's enough here for a hearty hunting."

"Just what I wanted," Darian said, closing the link.

Aleiya surveyed the tactical map, plunging back into the battle in time to deter an insurgent from trying to hit Darry from behind. Genan and Houjou were fighting in close proximity, and the inexperienced and outclassed LCDF was beginning to be more of a drag than a help in this battle; they had lost a few more of their mobile suits, leaving nine Strike Daggers to cower in cover on the lunar surface. Occasionally they fired back, but as three GINN High Maneuver Type-IIs plunged in, Aleiya knew that trying to save them was an impossible task for her outnumbered squad.

"I can't believe we only downed three of them so far!" Darry said. "These gu-"

Even before Darry finished his sentence, the GuAIZ R arced its back as an insurgent swept in at blinding speed, and impaled the mobile suit from the back. With a single slash, the enemy separated torso from hip, and kicked the wreckage off, leaving it to impact into the lunar surface in a cloud of dust.

The sheer audacity to speed into what amounted to the heart of Aleiya's formation had shocked them into inaction. To Genan and Aleiya's surprise, Houjou reacted first, slamming into the GINN insurgent with the GUAIZ R's shield-mounted beam sword from above before the insurgent could boost away. The beam sword burned into its cockpit, and the GINN High Maneuver Type-II tumbled away, a hole where its pilot should have been.

"They… they killed Darry!" Houjou said, her trembling voice evident even through the usually-poor wireless reception. "J-just like… that…"

"Get yourself together!" Genan said, moving towards Houjou's unit. "He's gone, but you're not!"

"Continue moving!" Aleiya barked, as the thrusters on her CGUE Assault flared. The three mobile suits of Halberd Team resumed their combat manoeuvres, doing everything they could to throw the enemy of-course.

The insurgents separated into two flights, with two bearing in from above Halberd Team, and two moving in from below. "Halberd 2, take 3 and make a dive! Initiate Maneuver 20!"

Genan had to force himself to carry out Aleiya's orders. "You can't dodge two enemies alone! Especially these-"

"Watch me," Aleiya said, pulling up towards space. On her viewscreen, Genan's and Houjou's units quickly vanished into the background, and were replaced by two mobile suits as the insurgents closed in around here. Stars filled her viewscreen as the CGUE Assault pulled away from the lunar surface.

Aleiya's comms unit burst into statics as an unidentified channel forced its way in. "…ven in defeat, you've caused no small amount of trouble for us!"

"I'll take that as a compliment," Aleiya said. "Getting desperate now that your ride's gone?"

The reply was a venom-laced snarl. "We'll pay for their lives from yours!"

Aleiya had no time to reply as she reacted, and the CGUE turned in a Kulbit, the mobile suit rolling to its side and around its original position in a circular motion, letting the lance of brilliant green pass through the empty centre.

Aleiya immediately stabilized the CGUE Assault and sent several 76mm rounds backwards. For all the good it did, however, the insurgents had recognised it as a distraction, and did not even bother to move away from the poorly-placed shots.

Aleiya grunted as she pushed the CGUE Assault into a sharp dive back towards the lunar surface, and the four insurgent pilots followed suit. Five seconds away from hitting the surface, she decreased her angle of approach, managing to cushion its landing with its feet and thrusters in full burn, before kicking off again to gain speed.

Alarms whined as the mobile suit's damage control displays signalled an overtaxing of the leg joints, but Aleiya had her hands full dodging the rocky outcroppings that ringed the areas around Copernicus. Behind her, one of the GINN High Maneuver Type IIs disappeared as its pilot slowed down to avoid crashing, leaving her with one pursuer.

No sooner had Aleiya kicked off another rock to enact a sharp turn did Genan sweep in from another route. The first GINN High Maneuver Type II chasing Aleiya literally impaled itself on Genan's sword, and his CGUE quickly used the chance to put more 76mm rounds into the mobile suit's torso, killing its pilot.

Houjou's unit entered the formation right after. "Is it over?"

"A second unit-" Aleiya began.

Even as the second GINN High Maneuver Type II sped into the formation, Houjou spotted the newcomer, and opened fire. The GINN went as low as it could without hitting the ground in order to avoid her shots, and even managed to avoid Genan's follow-up shots, before finally falling prey to Aleiya's unit, which finally cornered the insurgent and struck the GINN across the front, hard.

The insurgent pilot recovered quickly enough, having taken the blow with the GINN's shield, but with three against one, the GINN had lost its chance the moment it rushed into the enemy formation. Houjou's GuAIZ R stabbed the mobile suit from the back with its shield-mounted beam sword, before kicking it off and letting it drift away.

"Good timing," Aleiya said. "What about the other three?"

"Lost them, but last I saw, they pulled back into the sky for a better view," Genan replied. "Sensor spike; there they come again! ETA one minute and counting down."

Out of the sky sped two GINN High Maneuver Type IIs, and one went for Genan, the other going for Houjou.

Aleiya moved her controls, the CGUE Assault's thruster roaring. "Force them into close-combat or a running-gun battle! Don't let them suppress you with ranged attacks, andavoid letting them sweep in from the sides!"

The five mobile suits clashed together as Aleiya moved in front of Genan to engage the first GINN. Houjou, however, was having trouble just dodging, her opponent keeping her GuAIZ R dancing across the ground with a hail of beam rifle shots. Its sword was at the ready, the blade glinting dangerously.

"Houjou! Hold your opponent down!" Aleiya exclaimed. Not waiting for a reply, she pushed her own adversary away and turned her CGEU Assault's back towards the insurgent, her mobile suit's thruster flare blinding the GINN's optics, and its pilot's sight. "Genan! Take him!"

Before Houjou's opponent could react, Aleiya had closed the distance, and struck the GINN High Maneuver Type II in its back, the heavy sword shearing away its main engines in a storm of debris, wiring, and other shattered internal components. Houjou, now free to counterattack, drew back her GuAIZ's left arm and punched its shield-mounted beam sword into the GINN's torso, the energy weapon protruding from the GINN's back with ease.

Aleiya turned back to watch Genan mop up her original opponent, his CGUE's sword making short work of the GINN's torso armour. "An excellent distraction move you pulled, Leader. But a bit too much of a gamble."

"I know." Aleiya replied. An alert caught her attention again; this time, three GINNs approached. "Looks like the LCDF is no longer an equation in this fight. Halberd Team, initiate Maneuver 20 again!"

"We can take them he-" Houjou began.

"We're scattering into the rocks," Aleiya said. "I'm not going to throw ourselves into a straight-up fight; I'm out of tricks right now, and we need to bring down their guard first." She paused for a fraction of a second. "Change of orders. Halberd 2, take 3 and go with you. Safety in numbers."

"We can take them here, Leader!" Houjou said, with an edge to her voice that Aleiya hadn't heard of before. "We're an equal match!"

"We're not." Aleiya replied bluntly. "The enemy just saw all our moves. Cheap tricks like just now can work only once. Were it not for that, Halberd Team would be less one person now, and it would have been two versus four."

"I…" Houjou said.

Aleiya cut her off as the GINN High Maneuver Type IIs took aim. "No arguments. Go!"

The mobile suits scattered as the last three GINN High Maneuver Type-IIs struck. Their luck had ran out, however; Houjou was the first to go down, her GuAIZ R missing its right arm, hip-mounted railgun, and right leg from a well-placed shot.

The insurgent GINN wasted no time, and was above her unit in an instant, ready to deliver the killing blow. Only Genan's last-minute burst of fire with the CGUE's 28mm vulcan managed to distract Houjou's opponent, bringing the attention of both insurgents upon him as they chased his unit into the surrounding area.

Aleiya, meanwhile, was matching blades with her opponent; his first strike had damaged her rifle, and the insurgent did not have one of his own. Sweat beaded on Aleiya's face as she attempted to hold her own in a straight-up fight against her adversary.

The unidentified channel crackled again. "It's a pity, really. If we succeeded here, we could have garnered support from all across the Earth Sphere, and moved on to greater things!"

"You're still on that crack theory?" Aleiya replied, trying to distract her opponent.

"Too bad. When history unfolds, you'll wish that our operation here had succeeded."

"Most definitely not," Aleiya replied, the siren of approaching friendlies barely audible to her. "But if you step back now, maybe we can still consider-"

The GINN High Maneuver Type II pushed itself away from Aleiya's CGUE Assault, speeding in the direction of Aleiya's reinforcements; Darian and the rest of Blaster Team. Aleiya could see in the mobile suit's straightforward movements that pilot was aiming for a suicide; no sooner had he gotten in range when Blaster 3 and 4 struck the GINN with their beam shots, silencing the mobile suit in a short-lived, explosive pyre.

Aleiya kicked off from the ground, and her mobile suit lifted itself above the rocky terrain. She caught sight of Genan, circling around his target, now a shattered husk, and Houjou, crawling out of her disabled unit.

Two ZAFT shuttles sped past the area, one towards Darry's crash site, the other towards the surface of Copernicus, as the _Ironheart_ came into view over the lunar horizon, having travelled as close as it could to the terrain to avoid catching the attention of the mobile suits.

Darian opened up a private link with Aleiya. "I guess there's no one left alive?"

"We could scour the place. Probably not. I'm not too sure about the Alliance side, but we can expect similar results," Aleiya said, her mobile suit pointing in the direction of what had remained of their opponent. "These guys… hardcore doesn't even begin to describe them."

"We won't be seeing the last of them, would we?" Darian remarked. "Opponents this skilled and fearless… and this unbridled ruthlessness in fighting style."

"We'll be seeing them all too soon enough, no matter when they surface again." Aleiya nudged her controls, and the CGUE Assault turned towards Houjou's wrecked unit. "Let's get our house in order before we go off looking for them again."

**CE 73 June 18****th****, ZAFT ****Nazca-class destroyer [ZSFC-L2-P032] **_**Ironheart, **_**en route to PLANT main territory**

**20 43**

Aleiya eyed the mission report on her desk as she undressed, tossing her uniform and undershirt away. Catching sight of herself in the mirror, she frowned as she examined her shoulder and arms. Squad leaders were always burdened with copious amounts of paperwork, with little time to work out, and Aleiya was afraid that she was beginning to lose the physical strength that she had built up over the years.

The post-battle report had covered much, detailing how OMNI had cornered the three mobile suits escorting those who were planning to saturate Copernicus' air supply with the H24ar airborne toxin. They had fought, and with one remaining, the insurgent had committed suicide with self-destruct. Not one of them had been captured alive or intact. Aleiya's case was slightly different, but the results were the same.

The only thing of worry for ZAFT was the number of GINN High Maneuver Type IIs. While OMNI had been tight-lipped, Captain Viendi had managed to confirm, via the Lunar Cities Council, that OMNI did not possess anything beyond a few legs and arms of the GINNs. Aleiya herself was more than aware of the insurgents' thoroughness; of the few husks that had been brought to the _Ironheart _before the Lunar Cities Council had gotten all flustered at having a ZAFT warship on-site, none of them had a black box still installed in their systems. The insurgents knew their duty, and had modified their systems and self-destruct mechanisms accordingly. Even Sergeant Melinda and her men, who spent the better part of the battle and a few good hours afterwards discreetly scouring the battlefield and the enemy units that still remained, couldn't come up with anything.

Aleiya's thought continued running even as she stepped into the showers. Water poured down her shoulder-length, lightly-coloured cyan hair and lean body, running down the curvature of her slightly-muscular body, but she barely registered the feeling as the words she had exchanged with the insurgents came to mind. Genan and Darian both had similar experiences, although none of them had talked as much as Aleiya's opponents had; in part because both of them preferred ranged combat whenever possible.

Nevertheless, they had a sharing session, and the three had exchanged what they heard. At the end, however, none of them were closer to deciphering anything. They had dispersed, dismissing the words as the ravings of madmen, but something else in Aleiya's mind nagged at her to take those words to heart.

Aleiya was just done showering when a knocking sound emanated from her room door. "A moment, please," she replied, throwing on a shirt and a pair of short pants.

The person on the other side was Houjou, the only evidence of her previous location being the sling that her arm was resting on. She was sent into sickbay following the end of the battle for a fractured left arm and three fractured ribs, but it was nothing as serious as Darry's, who was still resting in the medical bay for several injuries, the most serious of which was a spinal fracture, and had been scheduled for a minimum of year of rehabilitation _after_ his initial recovery period of six months. While Aleiya hadn't seen them for the past four days due to her hectic workload, she had been planning to make a trip down right after her shower.

_Although_, Aleiya mused, looking at Houjou, and thinking back to the banter she overheard in the mess hall about Darry keeping the medical crew entertained with a multitude of silly jokes, _they seemed to have gotten out of this pretty well_.

Houjou fidgeted. "C-commander…"

Looking at her charge, Aleiya sighed. "C'mon in," she said, scooping up her uniform and putting them onto clothes hangers. "You look like you have something to say. I was just planning to visit you all in the sickbay in a few minute's time…"

The younger pilot hesitated; Aleiya arched an eyebrow and turned to look, as Houjou mumbled something. "What?"

"I… uh… I'm s… sorry… for holding you all back in the rock maze, Commander," she said. "I got caught up… I thought I was finally strong enough to take them on… but then the second time, the guy in front just swept me away like I was nothing…"

Aleiya noticed that Houjou's shoulders were trembling, and she placed her hands on them. "Houjou, no one is infallible. Least of all not me. These kind of things… I have a part to play in them too. There wasn't enough time to drill the importance of keeping calm in combat with the current pilot curriculum, and then this mission cropped up… And I, as the overall commander of all mobile suit forces on this ship during combat, gave the permission for all of you to sortie. It's completely within the bounds of current ZAFT protocols… but it still doesn't sit right with me."

Aleiya paused, and took a deep breath before continuing. "But I needed the numbers. No matter how powerful you are, sometimes one person on the opposing side can make the difference. I was lucky no one from ZAFT died."

"But… if I had just been more careful and decisive in my actions… I wouldn't have gotten injured… I could have stopped them before they took out Darry…"

"Well…" Aleiya said. "Well, not likely. Yes to the first, maybe. But for a pilot like you, without any live sorties at that time, it's a very stretched maybe. And definitely no to the second. But if you hadn't snapped and lunged at that insurgent, we would all have been staring for a little longer. That was a good reaction. It's proof that you were learning."

Looking at Houjou's troubled expression, Aleiya was struck by how much she represented the current state of ZAFT personnel. Having to pick up the pieces, shoulder responsibilities far greater than their paygrade or rank… and the helplessness at knowing that they might just be in over their heads. ZAFT had always been strained for manpower, and sometimes, the children of the PLANTS found out that they either had to grow up fast, or die out. It was a feeling, an experience she was all too familiar with. As a pilot. As a squad leader. As now, as a survivor of the Bloody Valentine War.

At least she had the privilege of voluntary enlistment, as she had joined during the early days of the Bloody Valentine War. None of the boys or men in the PLANTs ever did. And now, with the military strained for strength, none of the girls and women did, either. At least, not those from the recently graduated pilot batches. Aleiya had no idea how long that would continue.

She pulled Houjou closer, and the younger pilot started crying.

"C… commander… I… I'm… s…"

"Keep this lesson in your heart," Aleiya said. "Remember it. Learn from it. One day, you will surpass those whom you have once served under. Memories like this are what makes that possible."

Houjou could only nod.

The veteran continued her embrace until Houjou had recovered her composure. "Go wash up. Meanwhile, I'll get dressed," Aleiya said, a grin forming on her lips, "And we'll go see if Darry has finally laughed his spine out of alignment or not."

**CE 73 June 27****th****, ?, ? ?, ?, ?**

**? ?**

Within a room, its walls filled with display screens, was a man. Dressed in a very simple outfit, the man watched as his subordinate gave his report.

"It's a real pity that our mole didn't make it, but we've done as is required, Excellency. The insurgents were unable to escape, and now Sato will be forced to play his trump card. War is inevitable."

"Good. And what of the upstart in the Atlantic?"

"Crushed. He chose to commit suicide rather than be taken, but some of his comrades still remain."

"Scatter them far and wide. I only need one or two who can be turned to our cause."

"Your will be done."

The man dismissed his agent with a wave of his hand and turned to face the screens. His confidence was unshakable. He was the elite of the elite. Azrael had thought himself highborn, but he was an ant in the hive, compared to the connections left to his master, Lord Djibril. His factories and businesses were mere playgrounds, compared to the control Lord Djibril had over the arms industry.

He had successfully sown the seeds to war, and he had men willing to die to carry it out, fuelled by a false dogma followed by their equally deluded commanders, all of whom danced on his whim and died on his thoughts. Money, after all, was the ultimate power. Even the rumours of the man who had single-handedly stopped the previous war were but a footnote in his mind.

He had first caught wind of the radical ZAFT group a few months ago, and had sent his agents to watch them, assess them for their usability. Amongst all the idealistic trash and war-hardened garbage left by the Bloody Valentine War, they had stood out like a brand-new light bulb, their skills and assets too much to ignore.

With just a bit of cash waved in front of him, one of their numbers, who had been less than zealous in their goals, had grovelled at his feet, seeking more.

He had let them carry out their operations, allowing them to muster the strength for this strike at Copernicus. He had been prepared to release a few details to the unsuspecting OMNI fools, to make them look better. Unfortunately, ZAFT had somehow gotten wind of it.

That was still fine by him. They had forced the operation to failure, and in doing so, the insurgents, now with fewer resources, would be forced to more extreme measures.

All he needed was to make sure than the delivery of Pulse Engines for the East Asian expedition fleet to the Asteroid Belt was made known to these insurgents. Something like that was easy; even with the mole dead, it was still laughably easy. And with predictability, they would turn towards Junius 7; the largest solid slug that could be launched in the shortest amount of time. After all, gravestones were untouchable and sacred to only those with something to lose. For those desperados, anything would be fine.

The man laughed. It was going to be a good end to the year.

**Afterword: **_Final part of the new mini-arc, dealing with ZAFT's tangle with the terrorists that would go on to spark the Break the World Incident. While it does not have any actual counterpart in the official CE history, I felt that such an event would lend greatly as to how the CE-verse dealt with a hostile and volatile situation in the few months leading up to the Second Bloody Valentine War, as well as allow for another aspect of Logos' machinations; while I had no compunctions with terrorists giving the fuel for Logos' fire, I thought that the anime ended them as a slightly-incompetent joke organization, something unbefitting for a gathering of elites who were supposedly running the world for several years. Unfortunately, I couldn't exactly write Lord Djibril as an all-knowing villain, as the anime does have him getting info on the terrorists through Neo Roanoke.  
><em>

_While it might sound silly, I thought the highlight of this entire arc was me getting a chance to write about ZAFT's manpower issues after the war._


	24. Chapter 24: Rebirth

_**Author's Note:**_

_This fanfic is to write upon some of the events in Gundam SEED and SEED Destiny that are not touched upon or mentioned in-series, but their dates are listed on GundamWikia and are thus treated as part of canon. They are therefore based upon actual happenings in the Cosmic Era universe, but the events within them are open to interpretation. This fanfic is also an attempt at showcasing a "what-if" of all sides involved in the wars, and how some of the events within the show might have come to be._

**Gundam SEED: Tales of the Cosmic Era**

**Chapter 24: Rebirth**

**CE 73 July 25****th****, Unknown location, Atlantic Federation**

**? ?**

The interrogator watched the man intently from another room, behind a soundproofed glass screen. It had been forty-four hours since he had started playing mind games on him, but the man was a tough nut to crack; he had moved little and replied even less. Even now he was conscious; two electro-stimulators had been attached to his temples, promising a painful awakening were he to fall asleep, but despite the subject's haggard looks and his uneven, overly-loud breathing, neither the interrogator's colleagues before him, nor himself, had yet seen the devices activate once.

_Truly, they don't call him the Devil's Pact for nothing. He's as tough as a possessed being._

The interrogator looked up as another person, a female officer with the rank of Major, entered the room. "New orders," she said. "We're to turn him loose."

The interrogator laughed. "Are you kidding? This man was a member of the insurgency!"

"I'm not," the woman replied. "Here," she said, handing him a sealed letter. "Lord Djibril's orders."

The interrogator opened the letter and read through it, his face twisting in confusion. "Seriously? We have evidence that this man might have been the second-in-command of Captain Kelvin Geneden."

The woman shrugged. "Beats me. I'm not privy to Lord Djibril's workings."

The interrogator sighed. "I guess even Lord Djibril doesn't do unnecessary things. I'll get the guys to do the required procedures."

Letting the interrogator leave the room, Major Nain bint Aamir, of the Atlantic Federation's Office of External Intelligence, watched the man. She was engaged in a game, one where the greatest minds of the Atlantic Federation were involved in a struggle to return the country's power to the right people. To them, she was but a pawn on the chessboard. But she was determined to do her part; and that included risking incarceration to deliver fake orders… especially fake orders using the name of a man who, from what she had heard about him, would probably not bat an eyelid at killing thousands at any single point of time just to make a point.

_The legacy of the Atlantic Federation's rightful future… I must not let it die out._

**CE 73 May 21****st****, West Wing Lecture Room T2, Advanced Armor Tactics Combat Training Facility (AATCTF), New Glasgow, Nova Scotia, Atlantic Federation**

**Two months ago**

**11 44**

"Sir! Sir!"

Captain Ray Feric turned to see a female officer catch up to him, slightly out of breath. "Sir, didn't you hear me call you?"

Ray wondered for a moment. "Sorry, I was caught up in something. What's the matter, Lieutenant Searstone?"

2nd Lieutenant Celina Searstone leafed through the pile of notes that she carried with her. "It's this," she said, pulling out a dog-eared piece of paper. "When you explained how we should always engage an opponent in asymmetrical combat… well, we don't have a hard counter for aircraft, right? There is no asymmetrical combat for them."

"That may be true, Searstone, but you have to remember that a mobile suit's size is partially because of all the weapon systems that it can carry. Now, if you take an aircraft head-on you're liable to come out on the losing end, but there are ways to counter the advantages of anti-ground aircraft even with an improperly-equipped mobile suit."

"And that would be?" Celina asked, her eyes almost glittering.

"And that would be next lesson's work to be presented, Lieutenant," Ray replied. "I give you five points for thinking about anti-aircraft hard counters. I'll take them back for trying to wrangle the answer out of me. The original assignment was to research fighting methods when facing different opponents, was it not?"

Celina, to her credit, managed to look mildly admonished. "Sir, you didn't state the types of counters you wanted us to find."

"I never limited my options to just a few, either," Ray said. "You're free to assume that the range covers all tactical-level weapon platforms if you feel up to the task."

The two continued their banter down the corridor, Celina only excusing herself when Captain Kelvin Geneden showed up. The two Captains continued their walk down the empty place; it was a Saturday, and most of the facility was empty due to a lull period in their intake of junior officers. Some, like Celina, had stayed back for their own reasons; it was a three-day break, and going back home was optional.

"How's the place?" Kelvin asked.

Ray shrugged. "It's nice, I guess. Seeing all these pilots… I guess there's still hope for us."

"I told you it wouldn't be a wasted effort," Kelvin said.

Ray gave a short laugh. "I guess I got delusional with what happened during the previous battles and the latest South American War for Independence." He sighed. "It's good to know that at least our training facilities aren't responsible for the…"

Kelvin cleared his throat loudly, and Ray's words died off. "Right," he said, shaking his head. "I tend to forget."

"We all have things we need to get used to." Kelvin replied, as they entered a training room. Rows of computers were lined up on long tables, and the low hum of the air-conditioning was momentarily blocked out by the sound of the two men entering, the heavy door closing behind them.

"You sure this is safe?" Ray asked, as Kelvin locked the door.

"I checked this place for bugs just two days ago," Kelvin replied. "This area is clear." He moved to disable the main power; even the air-conditioning units fell silent, leaving the two officers with a room full of cold, unmoving air.

"So when are we going to meet up with them again?" Ray asked.

"We need at least three more days," Kelvin replied. "While we may have a lot of men, ultimately when the fighting starts we're going to be labelled as insurgents. Blue Cosmos is in command of a good portion of the Atlantic Federation Army, although the soldiers might not know it yet. One wrong move, and we'll be smothered even before we can put our plan into motion."

Ray frowned. "I still think we're moving too fast." He sat down on one of the tables, mentally going over his thoughts. "It's only been a month since I've been acquitted of all misconducts, and given this promotion to Captain. Three regiments of forces will not be enough for us to force Blue Cosmos to capitulate to our demands."

"Three regiments are enough to take Washington DC," Kelvin said. "More are coming in as well. The Atlantic Federation is having trouble keeping the insurgents off Panama Spaceport… or what is left of it. They won't have much focus on what they think are secure home grounds."

"Last I heard, they had only gotten the main delivery bay and the mass driver up again." Ray said. "Enough for military operations, perhaps, but far from being the all-range land-to-space transport centre it once was."

"They're progressing, although slowly." Kelvin replied. "With insurgents aiming for that place day-in, day-out, the Atlantic Federation will be too confused to see us coming."

"I've only been part of your plan for a month, Kelvin." Ray said. "I don't have a command, nor reliable contacts within the military."

"You underestimate yourself, Ray. Within the next month, our plan will most likely be put into action." Kelvin balled his fists. "Students pass by here on a monthly, sometimes weekly basis; this is an advanced tactics school, not a cadet academy. With yours and my rate of contact with them, it'll ensure that we can identify those who might support to our course, and those who will potentially become the lapdogs for Blue Cosmos. With all the unit requests coming through here, it'll also make it easier for us to place agents within military units that might look suspicious, or those with records that seem to have redacted parts."

"A network. I see." Ray said. "I guess I'm just over-thinking this. If this goes awry, we'll be facing off with the Guard brigades within the hour… I can't think of a worse way for it to end."

Kelvin laughed. "Caution is healthy, but have a bit of faith in our capabilities; this isn't a hastily-organized resistance done by poorly-equipped third-world civilians. We'll blow Blue Cosmos off their feet with a side hook that they'll never see coming."

**CE 73 May 25****th****, West Wing Lecture Room T5, Advanced Armor Tactics Combat Training Facility (AATCTF), New Glasgow, Nova Scotia, Atlantic Federation**

**11 44**

Ray watched with some degree of amusement as the ten officers seated in front of him, a gathering of 2nd Lieutenants and full Lieutenants, cracked their heads at his question.

"Well? No one has an answer?"

One of the officers tapped his pen against the table. "There really isn't much to say about this question, sir," he said. "You've already said that we're facing insurgents; the Dagger L is more than equipped to take them out. Even rocket teams aren't much of a threat."

"That would be true if you see things from the individual's point of view," Ray replied. "During my tour in the USSA, the insurgents had set up a killzone along one of our patrol routes. What was smart of them was that they used a wide pit, disguised using a tarp that was held together with a specially-constructed wooden frame with its edges buried into the ground. They filled the earth around the ends of the wooden frame and over the tarp; unless one was on the ground closely examining the soil as one walked, it would have been nearly impossible to detect the trap."

"Add to the messy nature of the tropical lands; deadfall everywhere, grass growing unencumbered and leaves large and small everywhere, and you have a very messy landscape that's both taxing on the eyes and the mind, in a subconscious sense." Ray reached further into his mind, pulling out more of his memories to share. "It's the same way camouflage is designed to work; machine sensors can't be fooled by sight, but that's only if something is there to be detected in the first place. Without a solid target, pilots are left with nothing but sight and sound; in this aspect, a soldier on the ground would have higher survivability than a pilot."

Ignoring the mental sound effects that came with dredging up unwelcome memories, Ray continued his lecture. "The pit did not need to be very deep. With small-scale workloaders and a few dozen liters of water the insurgents were able to dig out nine meters of soil across the five-meter-wide path, making for a sizeable trap. All this was done within the three-hour patrol shift system."

Celina mused for a moment. "So the mobile suits in front get stuck in the trap, and the ones in the back are blocked. The insurgents then take their chance to spring their trap."

"But the Dagger L Block 15 has upgraded sensors and a better servo system," one of the 2nd Lieutenants replied. "Surely a few missiles won't overwhelm it…"

"Not if the first wave of so-called missiles were actually cheap rockets filled with airburst munitions and metal flakes."

One of the officers looked uneasy. "Chaff?"

Ray smirked, a gesture towards bitter recollections of how they had been laughably ambushed. "You got that right; it scrambled our tracking systems, and the enemy got us with unguided rockets. Only one mobile suit got out of that ambush undamaged. The team count had been six units, with accompanying tanks, IFVs and infantry." He set his arms on the table. "I personally experienced that using thermal for finding soft targets in a tropical environment was worthless."

"What happened to the insurgents?"

"We counter attacked," Ray replied. "Infantry on the ground fought through the trees and bushes, using map coordinates to call for beam shot bombardment; I stayed on the road for as long as I could, waiting for the infantry to clear the way before moving into the forest. We managed to eradicate enough of them that the rest fled the zone. Still, we lost more than they had."

"This is the true face of warfare in the near future, people," Ray said. "In the early days of the First Bloody Valentine War, ZAFT pilots trained for fighting against numerically-superior forces equipped with relatively outdated equipment. The advent of the Mobile Suit, and the use of the N-Jammer as an ECM device, meant that fighting had to be brought into close-quarters, something the Mobile Suit excelled in. OMNI countered with numbers, but it's a sad truth of warfare that sometimes having more makes it harder to move around, especially if you're using older equipment."

"Then came OMNI's own mobile suits," Ray continued. "With the technology to even the field, but without the time for proper training, we compensated once again with numbers. The battles on Earth were hard-fought, but in direct combat, OMNI, with its numerical strength, terrain familiarity, and capacity for all-out warfare, emerged as the faction with the highest potential for a clear victory. For the survivors of the Bloody Valentine War, the battles up until the end were the best lessons we had; tactics were used and discarded within the same battle, and no one strategy worked for similar situations. This was especially true for the space front, where three-dimensional capabilities meant that one was either quick, stealthy, or dead."

"Now, with OMNI fighting against the scattered remnants of ZAFT forces unwilling to give up, Coordinator sympathizers, and rouge factions like those in the USSA or Western Europe, the emphasis on team tactics with small groups of well-trained soldiers is getting larger." Ray took a breath. "Against an enemy that refuses to fight head-on, you have to be prepared to meet the opponent on their field, and play by their rules. That's why you're here; to learn how to turn a disadvantage into your favour."

As the group took down notes and discussed amongst themselves, Celina looked at Ray. "Sir, can we talk later?"

Ray arched an eyebrow. "Is it lesson-related?"

"Yes, it is," she replied.

After the session, both Celina and Ray walked down the hallway, comparing notes. Celina had thought up on some tactics for use in small-scale battles, and Ray added his own opinions and suggestions in as the junior officer explained some of her choices.

"Well, if you really want to read it, I have a book on anti-air warfare tactics given to me by one of my friends; I imagine it'll help a lot." Ray said. "It's in my quarters, so if you're free right now, you could drop by, and I'll pass you the book."

Celina smiled. "Thanks. It's kind of embarrassing to have to loan something from a senior officer though."

"It's always good to pursue the ultimate in tactics," Ray replied. "We're not at the level where we're moving battalions around; every person alive in your squadron is one more person to watch your back in a messy situation." He turned to look at Celina. "I may be always going on and on about tactics and whatnot during all these tabletop simulations, Searstone, but my objective has never, and will never change. For people like us, who operate with a small, select group of people in heavy combat conditions, we only truly win when we lose less than the opponent."

"I… I understand, sir," Celina said. "But what if there is a situation whereby you needed to put all your squadron member's lives on the line?"

Ray gave a bitter smile. "Life is never as easy as that, isn't it? When you step back and observe a mission's proceedings in retrospect, you realize that there are many paths that you could have taken. I've experienced it enough times during the past few battles of my time." He paused in front of his room doors, searching his pockets for the keys. "Granted, different situations will result in different levels of foresight. Sometimes there really isn't any other choice but to bet all on the line. The key word is _balance_. It's one thing to be fixated on all-or-nothing manoeuvres whether they're required or not, and it's another thing to gamble the lives of your squadron members and you for the completion of a critical mission."

Ray opened the door, and the two officers entered. "Just wait a moment," Ray said, "If I recall, it should be somewhere… in… this drawer…"

As Ray searched, Celina looked around the room, spotting a jug of water and a few glasses. "You don't mind if I help myself to some water, do you, sir?"

"Please, go ahead."

Ray fished the book out of his drawer, and was setting the items back in when Celina passed his a glass of water as well. "I think you might need this too."

"Thanks," Ray replied, taking the glass. Pausing only to hand Celina the book, he drained the glass in a single gulp. "Well, this is the book. It should answer a lot of the questions about anti-air tactics better than I can explain."

"It's still nice to have you explain it," Celina replied. "I did try asking some of the other instructors, but there's a clear difference between those who've went through the Bloody Valentine War, and those who joined after."

"Some of them have fought in the USSA War for Independence," Ray replied. "Don't be so quick to dismiss their capabilities…"

Ray leaned onto the wall, the glass slipping from his grasp. As the sudden wave of dizziness overtook him, he caught sight of Celina's face, a look of pity on her features. The last thing Ray heard was the sound of glass shattering, before his memory went blank.

**CE 73 May 26****th****, West Wing Medical Facility, Advanced Armor Tactics Combat Training Facility (AATCTF), New Glasgow, Nova Scotia, Atlantic Federation**

**15 25**

Ray awoke, his mind struggling to bring his psyche back to reality as he faced the white ceiling. He remembered talking to Celina, then passing her a book, before blacking out. He checked the time; it was the afternoon, one day after he lost consciousness.

Propping himself up on one hand, he sat up on the bed, and took in his surroundings. The sickbay's patient ward was devoid of people except for him, with a single clock on the wall telling him that a day had passed since he was last awake.

He was about to get off the bed when a ringing sound pulled his attention to the table beside him. His cellphone rang; Ray half-expected the caller to be Kelvin, but it turned out to be Lieutenant-Colonel Riley Varham, the commander of Kevin and Ray's training wing.

"Yes, sir? Feric speaking."

"Finally awake, Feric? How are you feeling?"

"Good enough, I guess," Ray replied, flexing the fingers on his free arm. "Is there a matter, sir?"

"There is," Riley replied. "The doctors told me that you just got a very strong dose of sleeping pills, and that you'll be able to sleep them off without much trouble, but when I heard what had just happened, I had to take the chance. I'll be heading over now."

Colonel Varham had arrived soon after. What Ray found odd were the two military police personnel accompanying him.

"Good to see you're well again, Ray," Riley said, sitting down beside the hospital bed; the two MPs had stationed themselves at the door of the ward upon the old Colonel's request. Ray tried not to notice it, but he felt that the two MPs were watching him far too intently to be just there as guards. However, if he had been exposed, Ray was sure that he would be in an interrogation room somewhere rather than the hospital wing of the AATCTF.

Riley's voice brought Ray back to the present. "Well, Ray, don't be shocked when you hear this… but Captain Kelvin Genedan is dead."

"What?!" Ray replied, his voice sharp. "Kelvin… how?"

"Well, I got news about last night that there was a counter-insurgency operation going on," Riley replied. "A platoon of soldiers from the Atlantic Federation Special Force turned up and asked for Captain Genedan to be placed in their custody. At that time, I was having a talk with Genedan, so I had asked for a reason."

Riley sighed. "Things went south after that. Apparently Kelvin never planned to go along with them, because he almost had me in a stranglehold before they shot him dead." The old officer eyed Ray. "I even asked the troopers if they wanted you as well, seeing as you two had been close friends. Turns out they had insider information that cleared your name."

Ray could only nod mutely; it was all he trusted himself to be able to do without revealing his actual state of affairs. To add to that, his mind was rapidly piecing the evidence together; confusion and surprise gave way to realization, then to a bubbling rage, as he realized that Celina had set him up, somehow.

"Well, rest up," the old man replied. "Kelvin may be gone, but his and your trainees are still there. The other instructors and you are going to have to pick up his pace."

Ray was silent as Riley walked out of the sickbay. Waiting for the footsteps to vanish, he got off the bed and retrieved his uniform from the bedside drawer. He wanted answers.

And he knew where to get them.

**CE 73 May 26****th****, West Wing Trainee Bunks, Advanced Armor Tactics Combat Training Facility (AATCTF), New Glasgow, Nova Scotia, Atlantic Federation**

**16 32**

Ray knocked on the door. True to his expectations, Celina answered; when she saw his expression, her visage paled considerably. Not waiting for an answer, he stepped through the door, and kicked it close behind him.

Most trainee bunks in the AATCTF were two-bed bunks; Celina's roommate was out at the moment. Ray glared at the younger officer. "Well?" he asked. "Do I deserve an explanation for this?"

To her credit, Celina stood her ground. "I-I've done nothing wrong."

"Nothing wrong?" Ray echoed. "Drugging me, searching my room and workstations for evidence, and being an informant against a hundred different personnel spread out across the Atlantic Federation Armed Forces is 'nothing wrong'?!" He grabbed Celina by her shoulders. "Who are you?! Who do you work for?!"

With a whisper that was barely audible, Celina replied. "Blue… Blue Cosmos."

Ray let go of Celina as though his hands had been stung. "You…"

"My father… he was originally a dedicated member of Blue Cosmos. He was a civilian supporter, and used to work as an engineer on Yggdrasil, and never officially joined the military. During the Bloody Valentine War, he was injured when Yggdrasil was destroyed. An OMNI ship managed to pick him up, but the doctors said that recovery would never be complete." Celina fixed her gaze with Ray's. "Prolonged oxygen deprivation, radiation exposure, ultraviolet burns. He wasn't wearing a spacesuit when an explosion tossed him out; I was told ZAFT had fired on the station."

"So Blue Cosmos approached you, and said that they'll offer to support his medical bills, if you would become one of them as well." Ray said, fitting the pieces together. "They've got enough civilian supporters after all. What they want are proper military members."

Celina's smile was bitter, utterly devoid of any emotion other than regret and cynicism. "The first year rapidly drained my family of its finances. Not wanting to let my siblings become dropouts, I entered the military. But even the pay of an officer was barely enough."

"The military has financial schemes to help out in this kind of situation," Ray said.

"They restarted their financial schemes well after Bloody Valentine War. By then, Blue Cosmos had already pushed their offer through."

Ray was silent, although his eyes still burned with anger. "There's only one more question I'd like to ask." He stepped towards Celina, his eyes locked with her; the younger officer took several steps back as he approached, and tripped onto the bed behind her. From Celina's view, Ray was towering over her.

"Why was my name not on that list?"

Celina froze; she opened her mouth to answer, but it took her a while before any sound came out. "Y-your name just wasn't there-"

"Bullshit," Ray growled. "You have had enough time to sift through both my electronic and physical files to find the data that you wanted. Why did you take my name off?"

"I… no reason in particular," Celina said, unable to keep her sight with Ray's. "I just erased it off by accident while working with the files."

"Liar." Ray leaned close, close enough that he could only see Celina's eyes. "Celina Searstone, I won't pursue this against you any further. I realize that my own actions aren't anywhere near moral high-ground. But if you, for whatever misguided reason, thought that you could earn some measure of forgiveness from me by disassociating them from me, then you're mistaken."

Ray straightened up. "To me, there's no greater shame than having to live while my comrades die. I've experienced it too many times to count thus far… and this is yet another of them. You'll get no thanks from me for this little stunt of yours." He paused as he wrenched open the bunk door. "I'm disappointed, Searstone. I thought you were better than this. I expected my students to at least have a measure of honour in them."

"Sir, I-" Celina began.

"I've failed, apparently," Ray said. "All those lessons I spent talking about how you all should be a commander who prioritizes the safety of those under them were wasted. Go and be a fanatic like the rest of Blue Cosmos."

The door slammed shut as Ray left the room.

**CE 73 May 27****th****, Central Wing Permanent Staff Bunks, Advanced Armor Tactics Combat Training Facility (AATCTF), New Glasgow, Nova Scotia, Atlantic Federation**

**11 22**

Ray had returned to his bunk the night before, not being in the mood to do anything other than stew in his anger. He had fallen asleep late into the night, and was only awakened next morning by another Captain.

"I think it's better that you see this," he said, passing a sealed envelope to Ray. "Found this in her room, addressed to this door number."

It took Ray five minutes to read it before he finally realized what was going on. The other captain, however, had stopped him from dashing out of his bunk. "Don't bother," he had said. "The body's already cleared."

Now, for the fifth time since the morning, Ray picked up the letter to read again.

_Once you're done reading this, please burn it._

_I know this won't be enough to make up for whatever I did. But still, I wanted you to read this. Your experiences, your exploits, the calm manner in which you methodically refuted all of our points during those lectures… it was what I had aspired to be. A commander who could lead with confidence, who was well-liked by all under his or her command._

_I realized that what I did was a terrible thing. I know that as an officer, loyalty to nation comes first, even if the nation is currently being run by the wrong kind of people. Even so, I can see why you were so angry. I wanted to make this clear to you; I am not a Blue Cosmos supporter. It's thanks to them that my father is walking again, although he still won't have long left to live. But my siblings are all grown up now. They can support him. _

_I did try to withdraw from Blue Cosmos once my father was well enough. I've long had enough of being a whistleblower against my fellow comrades. But they made it so that it was impossible for me to withdraw. They know everything. They can see everything. The Ministry of Defence, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Brigade and Division commands… there are Blue Cosmos agents planted in all of them. Even if I hadn't been here, they would have been prepared for whatever your comrades and you were going to do. The pick their battlefields, and we're all just pawns to them. It's impossible to fully eradicate them unless we can do it in the shadows, on their playing field. Where they can't bring friend against friend. Where it's just you against them. But be careful; they have their own powers._

_I just got news that my next transfer was to Heaven's Base, at Iceland; it's scheduled for tomorrow, a full week before my time here was supposed to end. That's the new location for OMNI Operations Headquarters, or so I'm told. Outwardly, it looks like another transfer attempt since the last one from Geneva to JOSH-A failed. But I know better._

_This is how Blue Cosmos treats people. Once they have you, they'll just use you without remorse. They won't even let you have a semblance of your past life. It's fine for the fanatics. But I'm not one of them._

Ray ran his fingers over the last section of the letter, the paper splotched with droplet marks.

_I've had enough. I haven't even had the chance to shoot anyone yet. But my hands are stained with the blood of over dozens of my own people. A mass murderer who doesn't even look back at the faces of those I've killed._

_I'm the lowest of the low_.

_I wanted to be like you. To me, you were a beacon. Even in my world, half-sunk in darkness, the fact that I could still see you was a blessing for me._

_I'm sorry for doing all this to you. I'm truly sorry._

_I'm sure that there are others out there like me. Save them._

_Save us._

Ray's grip tightened on the letter, the well-worn paper wrinkling in response.

"Celina, you idiot…" he whispered, running his hands through his hair. "The last lesson I had wanted to teach you all, as a commanding officer… was to never back down in the face of adversity…"

_Overdose on sleeping pills_, the captain had replied, when Ray asked. _Celina's roommate thought that she had turned in early… she only found out in the morning_. _By then…_

A knocking sound brought Ray to the door. Whatever he had thought, he did not expect to see two Office of Internal Intelligence officers, flanked by eight MPs, standing outside his door.

"We'd like you to come with us, sir," one of the officers said. "If you don't mind."

Ray bolted, smashing through the human blockade with all the strength he could muster. He ran into the nearest toilet, and had already thrown the letter into a toilet bowl when a rifle butt connected with the back of his head. With his last remaining strength, he reached for the flush button, and let his mind slip into the darkness, the sound of rushing water the last thing he heard for the day. But his mind clung on for a little longer.

_You have my word, Celina Searstone._

**CE 73, July 29****th****, OMNI Enforcer AFRICOM, Sinai Force Base, Egypt**

**Morning 08 10 **

Ray shielded his eyes as he stepped off the transport plane, the sound of light crunching underneath his foot. The air was dry, the temperature too high, and Ray was certain that he had been thrown into this place as an exile for his part in Kelvin's failed insurgency. The only good thing was that Celina's actions had saved him from certain incarceration… but this was pretty close as well.

Dreaming of a freed Atlantic Federation had never been further away than it was now.

As Ray, having been demoted to a Lieutenant, continued towards the line of buildings on the side of the base, a few other people of different expertises behind him, he caught sight of a single man.

Lieutenant-Colonel Rahabinod Ravinan held out his hand. "Welcome to Sinai Base," he said. Ray took his hand, and both men turned as a loud siren echoed across the base.

Ray turned to the older officer. "That…"

"Well, aren't we lucky," Rahabinod said. "Follow me, Lieutenant. The best way to get you introduced to Sinai Base is to have a live demonstration of what we specialize in."

Ray gathered his items as he started. "Specialization?"

Rahabinod stopped and turned to face Ray, just as a Linear Tank drove past. A smile appeared on his lips. "We hunt insurgents, Lieutenant."

**Afterword:**

_A short chapter on a failed coup against Blue Cosmos, and also the starting point for another story that, unfortunately, isn't the job of _**Tales of the Cosmic Era**_ to be featured here. I intended for this to be an insight into how Blue Cosmos could have retained such control of a supernation, adding to the various instances showcased in previous chapters. _


	25. Chapter 25: Tears of the Gods

_**Author's Note:**_

_This fanfic is to write upon some of the events in Gundam SEED and SEED Destiny that are not touched upon or mentioned in-series, but their dates are listed on GundamWikia and are thus treated as part of canon. They are therefore based upon actual happenings in the Cosmic Era universe, but the events within them are open to interpretation. This fanfic is also an attempt at showcasing a "what-if" of all sides involved in the wars, and how some of the events within the show might have come to be._

_Because there are no set dates within the SEED Destiny series, the dates here are displayed only for approximation of the events' chronological placing to the end of the Second Bloody Valentine War, and are not indicative of the exact timeframes of any events that occur in SEED Destiny._

**Gundam SEED: Tales of the Cosmic Era**

**Chapter 25: Tears of the Gods**

**CE 73 October 8****th****, ZAFT **_**Nazca**_**-class destroyer [ZSFC-L2-P032] **_**Ironheart**_**, Third Approach Zone Line, PLANT Establishment **_**Armoury 1**_**, Lagrange 4 **

**13 22 [ZAFT Timezone Standard]**

Aleiya Varchenowa watched in horror as streaks of light spread out from a single point of fire. The fragments of Junius 7 rained upon the world; Aleiya could even name some of the locations that the fragments were headed towards. The shock she had felt when she first heard of the raid on Armoury 1 paled in comparison to what she was feeling now.

Likewise, all who were watching the video feed, taken from the monitor cams of the two ZAFT _Nazca_-class destroyers currently on-site, displayed expressions ranging from frustration to outright horror. Even Darian Forsseseur, who was usually calm and collected, had his expression twisted into a terrible visage of anger.

Aleiya clenched her teeth as her shock gave way to anger. Beside her, Houjou had adverted her eyes, her lips trembling.

After their mission at Copernicus, Aleiya had submitted a report, calling for a renewed effort in tracking former ZAFT personnel, as well as a request to be transferred to a special-force group tracing the moments of known insurgent groups around the Earth Sphere. To her mild surprise, news of ZAFT's involvement in the Copernicus Incident was still under wraps, but Aleiya had assumed that the information on the event was simply being processed by the relevant departments.

And while her transfer request was still being processed, this had happened. The words of the insurgents still echoed in Aleiya's mind.

_Too bad. When history unfolds, you'll wish that our operation here had succeeded._

_So this was what they meant?_ Aleiya thought. _They'd fall as low as the Naturals did during the Bloody Valentine War just to prove a point that's already dead?_

The entire bridge was silent; Captain Marcos Viendi was watching with an unreadable expression on his face, but his hands were clasped tight. Commander Nana Sette's left hand was gripping the edge of her console so hard that her knuckles were turning white.

Standing beside Aleiya, the only sign of Genan's emotions was the twitching of his jaw, as he struggled to keep his feelings under control.

Watching the silent rain of debris cover the Earth's surface, Aleiya's mind wandered off to the memories of her time on Earth; the face of a firm but kind volunteer doctor flashed through her mind for a brief moment. "This isn't revenge," she whispered. "This is attempted genocide."

**CE 73 October 8****th****, Victoria Supercomplex, OMNI EUROCOM Special Zone, Lake Victoria, North Africa **

**20 11**

On a typical night, the Victoria Supercomplex would be a place of quiet vigilance, with most of its soldiers sleeping, and its guards content to watch their borders. While the land was a place of sorrow for many veterans of the Bloody Valentine War, not all of its currently assigned soldiers were veterans.

Tonight, however, the base was alight with sirens, movements, and the unmistakable sounds of the Supercomplex's eight massive MR-6 railguns turning on their turret bases, tracking the streaks of lights that arced across the night sky.

The massive steam clouds that were starting to cover the ground of the Supercomplex, especially around the MR-6 turrets, were a testament to how far the guns were being pushed in their only peaceful use since their installation on the base.

The railguns were being used to shoot down the Junius 7 fragments that were passing by overhead. Three guns were dedicated to intercepting fragments slated to land within a 500-kilometer radius around the base, while five others fired boosted rounds to intercept fragments located higher in the atmosphere or further away from their zone of influence.

Complete interception was impossible; the five main railguns fired boosted rounds with an explosive warhead that aimed to knock the trajectories of the fragments they hit into the Atlantic or the Indian Oceans. Guidance was limited but still doable, something that had kept the crew of the five CICs of the Victoria Supercomplex busy for the past one hour or so.

Even then, the MR-6s, weapons of war, were unsuited to intercepting something akin to a railgun round that could only be delivered by a system with two to three times the power and range of the MR-6. So far, the Victoria Supercomplex had only successfully intercepted a handful of fragments, preventing the annihilation of the El Alamein OMNI Outpost and the city of El Alamein, as well as the destruction of Gibraltar and the ZAFT forces stationed there.

The coastal city of Casablanca, in Morocco, also had a close call, with a city impact diverted into a coastal hit, the tsunamis washing almost five kilometres inland.

Across the globe, each and every nation had readied its full capabilities, with the Atlantic Federation, Eurasian Federation and even the Republic of East Asia scrambling their missile assets to help with the interception of fragments. Still, hundreds of projectiles remained, each one a piece of super-engineered alloy tempered to withstand the heat, radiation, and micro-meteorite rigors of space living for at least a few generations.

Junius 7's original point of impact was in Syracuse, Italy, of the Eurasian Federation. While the single-location impact could be considered slightly less devastating to the Mediterranean region than the worldwide devastation that was now being wrought, the interior of Junius 7's base also carried decrepit facilities, many of them with significant stores of toxic materials left over since its semi-destruction in the Bloody Valentine War. Work had only started on clearing them out when structural safety issues had forced the combined OMNI-ZAFT team to pull out for the time being.

In a way, the fragmentation of Junius 7 was a hidden blessing. With the innards of Junius 7 exposed, the toxic materials were left to burn up as they re-entered the atmosphere. The many fragments of Junius 7's outer hull, however, were the main source of the disaster, as fragments over a certain size and material composition could not burn up sufficiently, resulting in a very deadly blind missile that could wreck cities with just the aftershocks of its impacts alone.

Numerous fragments of such make were now falling onto the Earth; if the people were lucky, most of these fragments would hit the water. Already the city of Zhytomyr, in the Ukraine zone, had been confirmed to have suffered from a direct hit; the crater caused by the colony hull fragment had been massive.

Kahora Zashe, OMNI Lieutenant Colonel, watched the events unfold from where she stood.

She hated her powerlessness, her inability to help, but as she was, there was nothing she could do except stand on the foggy pavement of the Victoria Supercomplex, listening to the repeated hammerings of the railguns' mechanisms, as humanity struck out futilely against the rain of death from the heavens.

**CE 73 October 8****th****, OMNI AFRICOM Sinai Army Base, Egypt, African Community**

**21 31**

Ray Feric watched as the night skies above him erupted in a shower of light, the bright lines breaking the otherwise unmarred dark night skies. Behind him, a few other members of Sinai Base watched the spectacle unfold above, their sight unwavering, not a word exchanged.

"You know, sir," 2nd Lieutenant Sharyl Camelot said, "Even if we're not in a predicted impact zone, we shouldn't be out here."

"A sight of beauty," Lieutenant Aaqil bin Saud said. "Yet at the end of this lightshow, only death and sorrow awaits."

"I've got no objections to return inside," Ray replied. "They probably even have casualty estimates coming in already." He continued staring at the skies.

_But this sight… it's a reminder of what I failed to achieve. What I failed to protect. _He drew in a cold breath._ We failed, Kelvin. And now the world will pay our price._

_Those bastards will surely use this incident as an excuse rekindle the flames of war again._

A call from behind had Ray turning. The voice belonged to Lieutenant Colonel Rahabinod Ravinan, the base commander. The man was well-known as a hero of the defensive campaigns OMNI fought against ZAFT prior to the Second Battle of Victoria, and preferred to interact directly with his subordiates.

"Get your things in gear and pick your people, Lieutenant," Rahabinod said. "There's been a call from OMNI AFRICOM to all military personnel in tertiary-level zones to report for immediate relief action. I've just notified Major Nain that she'll be the overall commanding of the expedition force; a transport squadron will be on the base shortly to airlift you all to the nearest disaster region."

Ray saluted. "Understood, sir. Thanks for bringing the orders to us." Turning to the people around him, Ray's attitude and tone changed; there was work to be done, and lives to be saved. He'll do what he could now, as opposed to standing around musing about the future.

"Aaqil, I need your help. Liaison with the supply crew, get them on the task as well. If you need people, just take them; we need a Red-Level force package ready in two hours. Prioritize medical supplies, food packs, and field camp equipment, especially insulating items."

"Got it," Aaqil replied. While they were of the same rank, Aaqil had no compunctions to Ray's requests; they were both experienced veterans of the Bloody Valentine War, and although they led different strike groups in combat, their mutual respect ran deep.

"Sharyl, get a hold of Chief Mendez, and tell him to get their men in gear. No doubt Major Nain will pass down the message to them, but I still need you to see what they are bringing. Tell them to get a squad with weapons, just in case."

"Got it," Sharyl replied, and was about to run off when Major Nain bint Aamir approached the both of them.

"Jeez, trust the Lieutenant Colonel to disseminate the information to everyone at once…" Nain muttered. "I'll take care of that, Lieutenant. More importantly, I want the _Manhunters_ to hit the ground ready for action. Consider it a force recon mission."

Ray frowned. "Force recon? I thought we were on a relief op, ma'am."

"There's been a report from an OMNI garrison that insurgent forces have appeared in the city of Kourou, Guiana. They've engaged OMNI security forces there, and have attacked civilians without warning as well. This is not including scattered reports on the AFRICOM battlenet of attacks in other OMNI regions of jurisdiction."

Nain thumbed towards one of the hangars behind her. "I'll be bringing Aaqil and Navana's units as standby forces so they can continue their relief jobs, but I need all available mobile suit forces, and I need Sharyl and her eagle eyes on the ground so we can hit any insurgents if they appear, before they can fire at us. I'll rather not clutter the disaster zone with a regiment's worth of helicopters and battle tanks that most probably won't have a place for them to be deployed effectively, so I'll settle for four mobile suits."

"What about base defences?" Ray asked. "If insurgents are really on the move, it might be a feint to make OMNI dedicate mobile suit forces to indefensible locations, leaving their bases open."

"It's flat ground for a good ten kilometres around here." Nain replied. "Given who he once was, I think the Lieutenant Colonel can handle anything with the 469th's Linear Tanks, short of a full-blown ZAFT invasion. There's also the 551st and 557th Helicopter Attack Squadrons on the zone for assistance, and they have Major Asanogawa leading them. At worst, we'll request for backup from the Egyptian peacekeeping authorities, or pull out from Sinai Base towards the El Alamein Force Outpost to request for reinforcements."

As Ray acknowledged his new orders, and Nain walked off to handle her duties, Sharyl struck her right fist into her open left palm. "Damned terrorists!"

"No choice. Change of duties, Sharyl," Ray said, as the two approached their hangar. "Get your Dagger L and the 94mm beam rifle."

As Sharyl ran off to prepare her own unit, Ray glanced up, looking as his own customized mobile suit. The Dagger L's gaze was impassive, and the dark red and grey colours of the 108th Armor Tactics Squadron's command unit would have made it impossible to see if not for the hangar lighting.

_It's time to teach some human scum a lesson._

**CE 73 October 8****th****, **_**Arkansas**_**-class cruiser **_**Potemkin**_**, Norwegian Sea, Eurasian Federation **

**21 52**

"This is nauseating," Lt. Commander Anatoly Hekovic said. "All the places hit… Athens, Shanghai, Rome, Prague, even as far as Philadelphia in the Atlantic Federation… and that's not even counting the locations along the equator. Even this far up north, we still have to partake in relief operations."

Captain Zanaya Helviya's gaze remained on the four _Spengler_-class assault ships sailing a distance behind the _Potemkin's _starboard side, escorted by her own ship and three others cruisers. "Such is the folly of mankind, Anatoly. Something like this was bound to happen when negotiations to downsize the Junius 7 remnant fell through."

"If I recall, neither side could agree to a proper method of reducing its size, right?"

Zanaya shook her head. "Nuclear charges or Meteor Breakers, did it really matter? All they needed to do was to find a better place to set up a monument." The Captain adjusted a few settings on her personal workstation. "Not to deride the feelings of those who wanted the next generation to remember the folly of this era, of course, but as always, humanity's limitless creativity in killing off our own kind never fails to surprise me. Nothing is sacred, it seems."

"Transmission from the flagship _Admiral Istomin_," Lieutenant Junior Grade Fredric Stonner replied. "Fragment hits confirmed on Bergen, Norway, and Hamburg, Germany. We've been ordered to split our forces and provide assistance."

"Tell the _Admiral Istomin_ we're ready to move," Zanaya said, "Have our medical bay prepare for shore operations as well. They need all the help they can get."

"To hit this far north… will Russia be okay?" Anatoly remarked.

"The Fatherland is strong; it will be safe," Zanaya replied. "But the people in Europe are our kin, and we are members of the Eurasian Federation Navy, before we are OMNI. I will not allow them to suffer any longer than they have to."

**CE 73 October 9****th****, Cape Town, South Africa, South African Union**

**02 13**

Richard Camelot wiped the sweat from his face, the mud from his hands drawing a smear of brown across his visage as he continued pulling at the massive piece of wood. With a sucking sound, the offending fragment pulled free, and Richard placed it aside to regard his real target; a young local trapped under a pile of wood pieces, still groaning, but getting softer with each passing moment.

At least the man was free. Whether it was luck or chance, the wood hadn't crushed him, and the piece that Richard removed was only to open a hold large enough to pull him free. "I got you now," he said. "Stay alive."

The man mumbled something intelligible, but it was only after Richard got him into a stilling position that the steel bar embedded in the man's abdomen revealed itself, mud water dripping from the offending debris, that he realized the dangerous position that the man was in.

All behind Richard, the lights of a hundred medium holding tents, set up by first-reaction organizations and other medical groups, adorned the dryer parts of the city. Debris were cleared into neat piles as volunteers, whether doctors, nurses, or even the less-injured citizens of Cape Town, worked tirelessly into the night in order to save as many lives as they could.

The tears of the gods had fallen, and had inflicted their judgment upon the world. It was Richard's job to make sure that wherever he was, as many people survived the tragedy as was possible.

Fianna Alshyre ran over to help Richard carry the man back to a nearby tent, where a medical team was already waiting. "You should rest, Richard," the doctor replied. "Even if you're no longer good for operations, doing this physical labour won't make your mind any sharper."

"He's right, Mr. Camelot," Fianna said. "You should take a rest. You've been working throughout the evening, and now you're extracting people this late into the night. The Lord knows that you'll be needed tomorrow."

"Tonight is a crucial phase, Fianna," Richard said, walking out of the medical tent. "With the infrastructure of every nation strained to the breaking point, by tomorrow there'll only be half the survivors left." He pulled off his glove, and fished his smartphone out of his pocket, which was beeping with a message alert tone. "Even if ZAFT offers aid, they won't make it in time for this place."

Richard's eyes widened as he read the message. It had been sent an hour ago, but it had just arrived; a testament to the warped airspace above, the atmosphere crowded with micro-particulates from Junius 7, and possibly the weapons used to break it apart. The contents of the message were as chilling to Richard as though he was at the scene, however. "My god," he said, moving to let Fianna see the message. "This was from my colleague in New Kourou City, South America. An insurgent mobile suit attacked the city and OMNI relief forces in the region at two o' clock, our time. They were hit at nine or so in the evening over there."

Fianna drew a sharp breath. "At this time?!"

"Precisely why it's at this time," Richard said. "Now we know this isn't a one-off incident, we have to work harder. If insurgents appeared now to harass us, we'll be worse than dead."

"I… I understand," Fianna said. "If there's anything to be done, please, let me know."

Richard watched as Fianna ran off towards the tents, to continue with her work of helping out the medical crews within. He had met her during the closing days of the USSA War of Independence, but she was already on her way to becoming a full-fledged nurse, and she had expressed an interest in his work. They had met several times after, mostly when Richard had opted to stay in South America to continue his medical work, and Fianna had joined the non-government medical organization he worked for in order to broaden her own horizons.

He didn't expect something like this incident to happen so soon right after Fianna and him were asked by their medical organization to pay a visit to their branch in Cape Town. And now, the message that insurgents had launched an attack on non-combatants unsettled him. Were it to happen in this region, Richard knew that everyone in Cape Town, casualty or caregiver, would suffer for it.

OMNI AFRICOM, being the smallest command in the OMNI force structure, was definitely not equipped to deal with multiple emergencies at once. If an armed group were to throw themselves into the region, they would essentially be running amok.

He saw a few people running towards the wrecked areas closest to the shore, and stood up. "What happened?"

The reply was instantaneous. "Someone found a family trapped under a collapsed building. Two elderly, three children, two adults!"

Richard immediately kept his phone and donned his heavy gloves, joining the small group of people running towards the site of the possible survivors. He had slept far less, and in worse conditions, during the Bloody Valentine War and the USSA War for Independence.

Right now, there were lives that needed saving.

**CE 73 October 10****th****, ?, ?, ?,**

**? ?**

The man laughed.

Sato and his merry band of fools had played straight into his hands, and now the world had paid the price. Lord Djibril had wanted a war, but the way he was so able to easily provide the conditions for one… it was almost too funny for him.

The man continued watching the viewscreen, the map on it showcasing the impact points of over a hundred fragment pieces. No doubt the forces loyal to Blue Cosmos were already in motion, moving to prioritize a reprisal against the PLANTs. Good. Let them do that. Perhaps they'll eliminate the Coordinators once and for all.

Most of the fragments had hit somewhere major; at least half of the damage was to coastal regions caused by tsunamis, born from the supersonic impacts of the ultra-dense hull alloy that formed the base material of a typical PLANT, in coastal regions. Fragments that impacted open sea regions were far less harmful to their surroundings.

Of note were the fragments that had hit cities, however. He had monitored the situation, and had managed to hack into the ZAFT battle-net, albeit for a short while, to listen to their messages. He was worried when the ship that had identified itself as the _Minerva_ had fired "its main weapon"; they didn't mention specifics, but the man was relieved that he had worried for nothing. If anything, the so-called main weapon's impact had actually accelerated the velocity of the fragments by forcing the main hull apart.

The man stood as his aide entered the room. "Your Excellency," the aide said. "It seems that Neo Roanoke has gone one step ahead and passed Lord Djibril the information you had gathered."

"Hm," the man said. "Let him do so. There's no harm done to me. The terms Lord Djibril set for me were to give him the conditions for a war. Now that that's done, I no longer have to have any involvement with them. Cut off all links with them. Send the news out to my subordinates that I have to be gone for a while, and for them to properly tend to their part of the garden."

"Yes, sir," the aide replied, and backed out of the room.

"Djibril…" the man mused. "Still, what that might appear as resolution is often linked in ways to impatience that are often hidden. People often trip when they start rushing for a goal. But still, even without this, the Coordinators are doomed. Their genes will guarantee their demise."

The man smirked, clenching his hands together. _For I have the knowledge of their true strengths and weaknesses. And their single flaw of nature._

_The created can never surpass the creator. Their pride will doom them._

**Afterword:**

_More mini-tales around the world. I thought such an approach would be good for covering the feeling of widespread devastation the Junius 7 drop was supposed to be._

_I initially (and randomly, I assure you) chose Benkulu, Indonesia, as the setting for Richard's tale, but with a 10-hour difference I wasn't sure if I could make the time mesh, as I was using French Guiana as the assumed setting for the first episode of Stargazer (they do have an actual spaceport there in real-life), which is referenced to in this short story._


	26. Chapter 26: Trial Under Fire

_**Author's Note:**_

_This fanfic is to write upon some of the events in Gundam SEED and SEED Destiny that are not touched upon or mentioned in-series, but their dates are listed on GundamWikia and are thus treated as part of canon. They are therefore based upon actual happenings in the Cosmic Era universe, but the events within them are open to interpretation. This fanfic is also an attempt at showcasing a "what-if" of all sides involved in the wars, and how some of the events within the show might have come to be._

_Because there are no set dates within the SEED Destiny series, the dates here are displayed only for approximation of the events' chronological placing to the end of the Second Bloody Valentine War, and are not indicative of the exact timeframes of any events that occur in SEED Destiny._

**Gundam SEED: Tales of the Cosmic Era**

**Chapter 26: Trial Under Fire**

**CE 73 October 11****th****, ?, ?, Atlantic Federation**

**21 14**

A heavy sigh escaped from Lieutenant-Colonel March Cornerstone's lips as he sifted through the photographs on his office table.

Photographs of insurgent mobile suits attacking cities and disaster areas in the European, South American, and South Asian regions. Alongside them were people, some of them burning OMNI and Federation flags.

Photographs released by the Atlantic Federation, revealing the GINN variants that set Junius 7 on its fateful course.

Photographs of ZAFT council members in public appearances, confirming the authenticity of the Atlantic Federation's evidence.

_Blast this all. Just when we were having trouble trying to oust Blue Cosmos sympathizers from the Atlantic Federation, those idiots in space had to go and do __**this**__!_

The process was so quick March was almost impressed by Blue Cosmos; the efficiency in which they had quickly seeded agents into key areas, the speed at which they had gathered support from the people, and most importantly, the resolve in which they had set forth in pushing their warmongering agenda forward. Even as the OMNI Land Forces worked around the clock in concert with other regional forces to rescue the refugees, a military build-up was already occurring in space.

Meanwhile, he had been forced to scatter his supporters far and wide to prevent any more damage from being done to his efforts... _their_ efforts.

Despite Blue Cosmos' single-tracked mindset on the extermination of all Coordinators, their agents of were not stupid by any measure; they had quickly cracked Captain Kelvin Genedan's plans, and had shut down his insurgency for good. A mere week later, Fredrick Rayburn, Brigadier General of the 3rd Atlantic Army, had "officially retired" from active duty.

Fredrick had been one of March's closest allies; while he still remained alive, he was no longer in any position to offer influence, and if needed, military aid. The other top-level generals were unreliable, and March had avoided contacting any of them; while they weren't direct Blue Cosmos supporters, those who actually had enough courage to stand up to that shadow organization were few, scattered, and too far away from him. He had engineered his own subordinate's reassignment, Major Nain bint Aamir, to OMNI forces in Africa to protect her from Blue Cosmos agents, and he himself had barely escaped being sniffed out.

March wondered how long it could take before he had to stop showing up at the Atlantic Federation's Bureau of Intelligencemain office in Washington; how long, before Blue Cosmos caught on, and had one of their top-level supporters force his "retirement" as the chief head of Section Four. March's position was significantly less well-known to the public, and as a result, significantly more dangerous to be in; he could be assassinated, and no one would ever manage to deduce the truth.

And if he were to reach that point in time, the effort to free the Atlantic Federation from the grasps of those who worked in the shadows would truly become a failure.

**CE 73 October 12****th****, Zone 6-1, B-Field PLANTs Primary Defence Zone, Lagrange Point 5**

**09 52**

Amano Suzuki gulped, struggling to quench her fear, as she watched the arrows on her tactical map advance. Alongside her, flying in formation, were the mobile suits of the squadron she was a part of. Further away, the various mobile suit squadrons and regiments, of the ZAFT Main Fleet, Expeditionary Force, and the Home Guard were in flight, arrayed in formation against a foe they all knew too well. Nothing had been spared; short of their garrisons on Earth and those who were too far to respond, ZAFT had recalled all available units to the PLANTs for its defence during this battle.

While Suzuki had been present at the battle of Junius 7 a few days ago, she had been part of the second wave of reinforcements sent out; in-between the mobile suits of the _Minerva_ and the two veterans leading the unit she belonged to, there hadn't been much left to do for her. She had watched, helplessly, as Junius 7 plunged towards the Earth, and the _Minerva_ followed suit.

And now, she was about to participate in her first major and proper battle. Her reassignment had just finished a day ago, and here she was, about to face down the largest battle since the Second Battle of Jachin Due, two years ago.

She had seen the aftermaths of that battle, first on the news, then in books and military teaching materials. It hadn't been pleasant.

The intercom crackled as the squadron channel fired up with the voice of her commander, Rolla Ardeis. "This is Grinder Leader; orders have been given for all weapons free. Three minutes to enemy force contact. Stay sharp."

"This is Grinder 7," Suzuki replied, adding her voice to the stream of acknowledgements from her squadron members. "…acknowledged."

Suzuki shook her head in a gesture to clear her thoughts, her shoulder-length, straight-cut dark-blue hair waving in the microgravity. Putting on her helmet, she checked the status of her weapons; her GuAIZ R, a GuAIZ variant produced after the war, was an up-gunned variant of the original with a speed and manoeuvrability reduction to reduce problems for less experienced pilots. The GuAIZ R's hip-mounted railguns were her main damage dealers, as well as the Cattus bazooka and beam rifle her unit carried in its right and left arms respectively. A medium shield with a beam sword emitter gave her a measure of close-quarters capability, but she knew that without factoring in other variables, the specifications of her unit would be no match for any Aile variants of OMNI's mobile suits.

Her teammates were likewise piloting the same things, except for two of them in older GINN Assault models to make up for the lack of advanced hardware available for distribution. While her GuAIZ R wasn't a spectacular machine by any measure against the CGUE or the far-newer ZAKU Warrior, she was glad that she wasn't stuck in a GINN. Granted, most of the GINNs were relegated to fire support, but at the rate in which the enemy was closing in, and with their numbers, the battle was going to descent into a close-range fight regardless. Speed and manoeuvrability would be the deciding factors of any combat, whether in a swordfight, or a close-range shooting battle.

"Contact in ten seconds," Rolla said, her voice bringing Suzuki back to reality. The younger pilot shook her head, and she focused on her targeting computer's display.

As the computerized countdown counter on her display reached zero, the viewscreen of Suzuki's machine flared brightly. Countless missiles sped forth from the ZAFT formation towards the approaching OMNI troops, their thrusters appearing as bright spots of light against the backdrop of space, and for a brief moment before the missiles detonated, Suzuki fancied seeing green beams lance out towards them.

In the next moment, Rolla's own Blaze ZAKU Phantom sped forth, overtaking the squadron she commanded. Three more Blaze ZAKU Warriors followed her. "All Bravo-tagged units, hang back for fire support; once OMNI closes in, pick your targets and open fire! Grinder 5, I'm leaving the young ones in your care! We'll be joining the Alpha Teams of Icepick and Hatchet Squadrons at the A Field to keep as many Daggers as we can from coming too close, so don't let the chicks wander into fistfighting range!"

A Gunner ZAKU Warrior accelerated to the front of Grinder Squadron's position, and stopped there, multi-phase cannon ready to fire. "Got it, ma'am," Keth Wheeldon replied. "Alright, nuggets, you heard the lady. We'll be working alongside Icepick Bravo and Hachet Bravo Teams to defend this zone, so get your glasses in gear, and get shooty!"

The space in front of Suzuki rapidly filled with crisscrossing lines of fire and beams as the OMNI and ZAFT vanguard units rushed into combat. Even as mobile suits locked weapons in close contact and fired upon each other, a few OMNI units broke through and rushed for the rear lines. One Dagger L headed straight for Suzuki, and the young pilot recoiled as she raised her GuAIZ R's left arm, the barrel of its beam rifle alight with energy.

The Dagger L, almost lazily, dodged the shots she sent its way, instead forcing her back with its own cover fire. The OMNI mobile suit was almost within beam sabre range when a blast of energy melted through most of its right side, leaving it to drift off into the distance before the bright flare of an explosion appeared, and claimed the mobile suit.

"Get your mind out of the gutter, Grinder 7!" Keth said, his Gunner ZAKU Warrior's multi-phase cannon pointed in her general direction. "If you can't hit him with one weapon, then set him up with your other guns!"

"R… right," Suzuki said, her mind still wheeling from the experience. Another alarm sounded; four Dagger Ls were approaching from the bottom, one of them armed with a Launcher Striker pack.

Keth's fire forced the two apart, and one of the Dagger Ls headed towards Suzuki. "Grinder Bravos! Focus on the normal Daggers! Leave the special one to me."

As Keth and his adversary traded high-powered energy blasts, Suzuki and her comrades opened fire. The Dagger Ls scattered, one of them spinning off-course from a clipping blow with a 500mm bazooka from Grinder 11's shot.

"Got him!" Grinder 11 said.

Suzuki focused her attentions onto another Dagger L, her beam rifle and Cattus bazooka discharging shot after shot. The Dagger L simply accelerated over her barrage, until Suzuki remembered to use her GuAIZ R's railguns. Aiming just slightly in front, the Dagger L was thrown backwards as twin solid slugs slammed into the lightweight mobile suit; one smashed into its shield, while the other penetrated its lower torso armour, ending with a blast as the round exited from its back.

Finishing her target off with her beam rifle, Suzuki heaved a sigh of relief. Her rest was short-lived, however, as a scream erupted over the intercoms, and Grinder 11's IFF vanished off the tactical map, replaced by a "Signal Lost" message.

In an instance, Suzuki's frantic response overpowered her shock. "Grinder 11! Taris!"

"Maintain radio discipline, you idiot!" Keth shouted, as he narrowly dodged a multi-phase cannon blast, returning fire with his Gunner ZAKU's own weapon. "All Grinder Bravos, spread out and stay mobile! You'll be easy pickings in close combat if you forget to maneuver!"

The ZAFT units filed out, far slower than Keth liked, as the Dagger L pushed Grinder 11's GINN carcass off his beam sabre, and sped off to avoid a hail of beam rifle shots. The mobile suit doubled back in a tight arc, and immediately headed for Suzuki.

Biting back the urge to cry out, Suzuki brought up all her weapons, and the GuAIZ R recoiled backwards as it fired all of its weapons in a single salvo. Predictably, the Dagger L broke left, avoiding all the shots, and fired.

The beam grazed the GuAIZ R's right shoulder, the blast slagging the Cattus bazooka down its length, as well as rendering the mobile suit's right shoulder thruster inoperable. Suzuki stifled a cry of surprise, then tossed the ruined weapon away.

_If I can't hit you at range…!_

The GuAIZ R accelerated as Suzuki closed the distance with her opponent. Her mind was focused on only one thing; to get to her opponent. Even a Dagger L exploding right beside her, courtesy of one of her teammate's support fire, failed to divert her attention.

"Grinder 6 to Grinder 7, you're being too reckless…!"

Suzuki barely heard her wingmate's words as she pushed the GuAIZ R forward; the beam sword emitter on its shield flashed to life as both mobile suits struck out at each other. Suzuki's first strike was blocked by the Dagger L's beam sabre, while her rifle was shunted aside by the Dagger L's shield.

Not missing the moment, The GuAIZ R's railguns slid into position; one round went wide, while the other gun scored a glancing hit on the Dagger L's torso. The mobile suit backtracked away even as Suzuki pressed her attack, not realizing that she was screaming.

The Dagger L missed its block , and the machine shuddered as Suzuki struck into the enemy's torso, her beam sword digging deep into its frame. She almost forgot to pull back until the Dagger L started to spark across its frame, and watched as the unit was torn apart into debris in a series of explosions.

Suzuki's mind snapped to attention as Keth's voice sounded out over the channels. "Bravos, focus fire on that _Nelson_-class battleship coming through! Aim for the bridge and midsection; older energy weapons and solid rounds won't be able to take on its front and turret armour!"

Suzuki turned, and a battleship was indeed approaching their position, anti-MS suppressing fire pouring forth from all its weapons, engines alight as it sought a breakthrough into ZAFT lines. Around it, at least a squadron of Dagger Ls' swarmed about, providing area defence for the large warship.

Almost immediately, a dozen alerts on Suzuki's screen lighted up as the warship unleashed missiles in all directions. The Picus CIWS guns on the GuAIZ R's head blazed to life as Suzuki threw her unit into several manoeuvres in order to dodge the missiles that were tracking her mobile suit, while her unit automatically adjusted its CIWS fire to hit the targets closest to her. Others headed for Suzuki's comrades as they scattered in similar patterns, and she saw Keth's ZAKU throw four canisters; the flare grenades detonated one after the other, drawing away a large number of missiles towards the area of detonation.

"All units, leave the rest of the missile defence and the warship's escorts to the Bravos from Icepick and Hatchet!" Keth ordered. "Begin concentrated fire! 3-second burst!"

Beams, shells, and rocket rounds struck the _Nelson_-class battleship; most of Suzuki's shots and her comrades' went towards the bridge, its exposed launch rails, and the battleship's midsection, as ordered, while Keth's Gunner ZAKU Warrior carved a long gash into the front of the warship, the mobile suit's powerful multi-phase cannon making short work of even the warship's armour, improved since its operational days in the Bloody Valentine War.

Even Suzuki could see, however, that their barrage was too far away for the precision needed to exploit the cracks in the battleship's armour; the _Nelson_-class was far from crippled, its bridge damaged but still intact. Several other warships in the distance were attempting the same type of breakthrough, and they were almost crossing into the zone where Suzuki and her comrades were. With most of ZAFT's mobile suits expended into a screening formation, any ships that broke through their current position would be facing only the ZAFT warship fleet; and if they carried their own escorts within, even the ZAFT warships would fall quickly… leaving them a clear shot at Aprilius One, the ZAFT headquarters, and the _Gondwana_, ZAFT's one and only command vessel.

To her surprise, however, Keth halted the assault as the warship began to pull back. "All units, hold position. Do not, I repeat, do not close distance with any warship targets and their escorts."

Rolla's voice came in next on Keth's screen. "Grinder Leader to Grinder 2, how are the Bravos holding up?"

"Lost Grinder 11 in close quarters to enemy vanguard team," Keth replied. "In any case, what was up with that warship? OMNI doctrine doesn't typically encourage suicidal rushes like those."

The intercom crackled as it went into standby, with Rolla temporarily switching to another frequency as she shouted something to someone else. "I don't know," Rolla said, switching back. "Whatever they're planning, though, has ZAFTCOM worried enough that they're bringing out reserve units to reinforce the B Field. We're being tangled up by all the mobile suits in this region, so we can't get in close to hit those ships if they try a breakthrough again." Rolla paused for a moment, before continuing. "Get ready. A wave of mobile suits just overshot us. These OMNI troops are just pushing their way through."

"Roger that. Grinder 2 over." Keth said. "Grinder 2 to all Grinder Bravos, heads up! Enemy units incoming!"

No sooner had Keth disseminated the information than the new group of Dagger Ls charge into the area. Within seconds, their beam weapons entered effective range, and all ZAFT units in the area opened fire.

The first kill to the assault went to ZAFT, but even as Suzuki targeted a Dagger L, sending the mobile suit tumbling with a crippling one-two blow from her GuAIZ R's beam rifle and mounted railguns, she could see that the exchange rate was still tilted in favour of OMNI. Around her, the ZAFT units began to suffer damage; most of the mobile suits were still in fighting condition, but a few had lost weapons and limbs, and one or two had even been outright destroyed. OMNI could afford to lose a squad of four for every ZAFT mobile suit that was shot down.

A scream on the squadron channel caught Suzuki's attention; Grinder 10 had taken a hit to her GINN Assault Type's torso, and even as Suzuki sped to her aid, another Dagger L swept in from behind and finished off the wounded mobile suit. Pieces of moving debris from the destroyed mobile suit bounced off Suzuki's GuAIZ R as she charged the nearest Dagger L, sending it reeling from a sword strike as it deflected the strike with its shield.

Her follow-up beam rifle shot was blocked by the Dagger L's wingmate, who proceeded to push her back with cover fire. The front of Suzuki's GuAIZ R lighted up for a brief moment as the mobile suit's mounted railguns deployed and fired, chasing off both Dagger Ls; Suzuki immediately put some distance in-between them.

Suzuki was about to head off to another target when another voice cut into the squadron channel. "Grinder 9 requesting for backup! I'm at Zone 6-2, nearing the A-Field! Someone! Anyone!"

Keth gritted his teeth. _I told them to pay attention to their distance…!_ "Grinder 2 to Grinder 7! Get in there and cover Grinder 9! And don't get caught in a melee fight!"

Thrusters flared as Suzuki's GuAIZ R turned, its other components working to compensate for her mobile suit's inactive right shoulder thruster. "Grinder 7, roger that."

The GuAIZ R sped off, Suzuki pushing her mobile suit to the limit to get there in time. Up ahead, she could see Grinder 9's GuAIZ R and the metal carcass of a Dagger L near it. Swarming around his position were two Dagger Ls, which were keeping him from retreating; three more were approaching his position, with one of them equipped with the Sword Striker Pack.

"Grinder 7 to Grinder 9, start retreating! Lay down some cover fire; I'll watch your flanks."

"R-roger that!"

As the two GuAIZ Rs unloaded with all their weapons, the Dagger L's scattered. One of them was hit in the shoulder, the damaged mobile suit veering out of the immediate area, while the other four circled the two ZAFT units before diving in; two going after Grinder 9, while two more, one of them being the Sword Dagger L, moved in on an intercept course for Suzuki.

Using her beam rifle to keep one Dagger L dodging, Suzuki activated her unit's railguns and fired. While she expected the Sword Dagger L to dodge, she didn't expect it to release its beam boomerang at the same time; the projectile came in too fast for Suzuki to avoid it completely, and it cut off her GuAIZ R's right arm at the elbow, depriving her unit of its beam rifle.

"Grinder 7!"

"I'm still okay!" Suzuki replied. _If I don't keep up the defence…_

The Sword Dagger L swept in, and Suzuki dodged to her right; the slash missed her unit. The next instant had the pilot seat restrains digging into her pilot suit as she barely deflected a hilt thrust from the Sword Dagger L, the beam tip of its Anti-Ship Sword's hilt activated. The blow left a scorched mark on the left side of her GuAIZ R's head unit, and she barely adjusted in time to block a second blow, this time from an under-swing with the heavy sword.

Suzuki gritted her teeth as she attempted to back away from her adversary, but the Sword Dagger L kept up the assault with a beam sabre in its other hand. The Sword Dagger L's head-mounted CIWS blazed, the sparks of the bullets bouncing off the armour of her GuAIZ R, adding to her disorientation.

_I won't be able to keep this up much longer-_

"Sierra Antares 1 to Grinder 7, don't falter! Keep up the defence!"

Suzuki's actions reacted out of habit to the commanding tone of the voice, and her mobile suit moved according to her training, doing her best to prevent the Sword Dagger L from landing any decisive blows. Even so, a part of her mind wondered at the person behind the comms; ZAFT squadron leaders with the "1" suffix, rather than "Leader", were from the Expeditionary Forces. And the two-word ID code meant that its user was likely a battalion commander, or someone of even higher rank-

The next moment, a blue blur came in-between the two units; a lightning flash of pink, and the Sword Dagger L was sent reeling, its arms ending in mangled stumps with red-hot ends, as a Slash ZAKU Phantom appeared in-between Suzuki and her adversary. Before the enemy unit could retreat, the ZAKU Phantom swung its beam polearm in a tight arc, bisecting the Dagger L at the waist.

The second Dagger L giving chase, upon seeing his teammate get chopped up, decided to retreat, and fired haphazardly at the Slash ZAKU Phantom to prevent it from giving chase, even as it sought to put distance in-between the two units. The ZAKU Phantom's pilot was unaffected, however; while none of the shots hit, its shields slid forward to cover its torso, and the ZAFT mobile suit promptly shredded the Dagger L with a long burst of fire from its back-mounted twin gatling beam cannons.

As Suzuki heaved a sigh of relief, Sierra Antares 1 opened a full channel. "Not bad for your first major battle, Grinder 7." Captain Yzak Joule said. "But this place is the A Field; it's the main battlezone. Get out of here as soon as you can."

Suzuki's voice nearly caught in her throat when she realized who she was talking to. "A… ah… a-a-acknowledged, sir…"

Yzak smirked. "Don't get all cocky just because you served on the _Voltaire_ and survived the tussle at Junius 7. It's nothing compared to this."

The red-faced Suzuki nodded vigorously. "R-right, sir."

Further up front, Grinder 9 drifted towards her position as Rolla's Blaze ZAKU Phantom charged the two remaining Dagger Ls; one of the OMNI mobile suits fell back as a thrown beam axe smashed into its torso, and the other Dagger L shuddered as several shots struck its body. The first Dagger L barely had time to react before Rolla's Blaze ZAKU Phantom completed her manoeuvre, pulling on the axe mid-flyby, and shearing through the Dagger L with the momentum.

"Grinder Leader to Grinder 9, what the hell did you come out here for?! This is the A Field! If you're not alert, you're going to get caught up in the tangle!"

"R-roger that, ma'am, my apologies." Grinder 9 replied. "Grinder 9 returning to B Field."

The two ZAKU Phantoms ignited their thrusters and sped back into the fray, leaving the two GuAIZ Rs to limp back to the B Field; Keth's Gunner ZAKU Warrior, its shoulder shield scored with burn marks and a long gash, was the first ZAFT unit to greet them.

"You guys are sure as hell a lucky bunch of fools," Keth grumbled. "Grinder 9, get back to your position. Grinder 7, return to C-Field and ask around for some repairs. I'd rather not push you if I could, and we've managed to get this area secured in the time you two were away."

Suzuki was about to acknowledge her orders when a new transmission cut in, this time from ZAFT command. "This is ZAFTCOM to all units. Prepare to intercept enemy units closing in from polar orbit! They're loaded with nuclear missiles. Don't' let a single one hit the PLANTs!"

Several Grinder squadron members cursed over the open channels. "N… nuclear… missiles?!"

Suzuki gasped. "…No! This…!"

"Quiet!" Keth exclaimed. "ZAFTCOM isn't done yet!"

A different voice sounded out over the comms. "The following battalions are to abandon previous orders and move for an intercept immediately; Quebec Caelum, Quebec Hydra, Sierra Antares, Sierra Pyxis, Victor Draco, and Victor Libra. I repeat, the following battalions are to move for an intercept immediately; Quebec Caelum, Quebec Hydra, Sierra Antares…"

"What about Delta Lacerta?!" Grinder 8 exclaimed. "Why weren't we called?!"

"We're too far away, Grinder 8, keep your brains with you!" Keth said. "Our role here is to defend Zone 6-1 of the B Field, the southern polar regions of the PLANTs. Even if we got out there and intercepted their nukes, we'll be letting OMNI get a free pass to gut us from under!"

Keth's Gunner ZAKU looked towards the "top" of the battlezone. "What the enemy wants is for us to run about like headless animals! We won't let them have that."

Suzuki looked upwards, feelings of helplessness threatening to overwhelm her. A loud alarm shook her out of her inner thoughts.

"Grinder 2 to all Grinder Bravos!" Keth said. "Battalion-sized enemy force has broken through the A Field, they'll be here in thirty seconds! All units, discard your previous orders; prepare to intercept!"

**CE 73 October 12****th****, **_**Nazca**_**-class Destroyer [ZSFC-L2-P416]**_**Nox Avis**_**,**** Zone 3-1, C-Field PLANTs Primary Defence Zone, Lagrange Point 5**

**10 42**

Captain Miar Reiden gripped the armrests of her captain's seat as ZAFTCOM's message relayed itself. Outside of the _Nox Avis_, explosions and fire dotted the darkness of space; streak of light bypassed her ship, a sign of mobile suits rushing to intercept an enemy attack that they expected, but did not think was actually possible.

The area where her ship had been deployed in, the C Field, was the "top" of the formation, and was where most of the strike fleet was being prepared for a decisive blow from above the enemy, whereas most of the interceptor mobile suits and the support fire teams were in the A and B Fields, which were "in front" and "below" the C Field, respectively.

Only one mobile suit battalion, Victor Draco, was assigned to them as fleet interceptors, and now they had been recalled for a different task; one that was infinitely more important. While she was technically the closest to the nuclear attack, she would only reach optimal firing position within fifteen minutes; they only had four minutes left to react to this crisis.

"Ma'am!" Keith Lansley said. "Your orders?"

Miar closed her eyes. "Even if we move at full burn now, we won't even come close to making it. Let's not get in the way of the mobile suit teams." She straightened her captain's headdress. "Follow through with the last firing solution; snipe their vanguard ships! Set up an assault sweep pattern, and move the _Nox Avis_ up front along with the other warships to defend the space left behind by the interceptor battalions. Don't let a single enemy mobile suit get through our lines!"

**CE 73 October 12****th****, Zone 3-3, A-Field PLANTs Primary Defence Zone, Lagrange Point 5**

**10 43**

Larry Falke grunted as his Blaze ZAKU Phantom shook, its engines pushing out all the power they had, so as to close within firing range in the small amount of time left to him. All around him, beam shots and solid rounds lanced out from the units of Quebec Hydra; at their speed and range however, they did not even come close to scratching the paint off the swarm of nuclear missiles that were now making their way towards the PLANTs. Scant minutes were all that they had been given to react to this new threat.

Scant minutes were all they had to work with.

If they were headed for only Aprilius One, it would still be a manageable situation. But the spread of missiles clearly indicated that the OMNI forces had more than one warhead targeted at _each and every PLANT._

_First the Drop of Junius 7, now this…! Isn't one disaster enough?! Were the three years that had passed since then all for nothing?!_

"…I won't let you barbarians do as you please!"

**CE 73 October 12****th****, Zone 1-3, A-Field PLANTs Primary Defence Zone, Lagrange Point 5**

**10 44**

Aleiya Varchenowa roared as she shoved the Dagger L away from her, the shoulder-mounted vulcans of her CGUE Assault raining armour-piercing rounds upon her unfortunate target. Before the other Dagger Ls in the squad could have their chance at vengeance, Aleiya was already away, her CGUE jettisoning its Assault armour pieces to reduce the unit's overall weight; its thrusters blazed, and the CGUE was gone in a flash. Behind her, other mobile suits followed, the thrusters on their units burning as brightly as possible. Darian's squad swept in, peppering the remaining enemy units with beam shots; before the enemy could react, they were gone as well.

The entire A Field had nearly emptied itself; B Field was full of fresh pilots, and with all the fighting going on, the A Field's actual location had shifted nearer to the polar orbit than most others, with their unit being one of those fighting nearer to the "top" of the zone. Aleiya and Darian's squad joined the rest of Victor Libra, the battalion moving as one to intercept the greatest threat to their home since that fateful day, three years ago.

Even as Aleiya strived to reach optimal firing position, a small part of her mind already knew what was going to happen. It was cold hard numbers, a result that was as clear as day.

…_We're not going to make it-!_

**CE 73 October 12****th****, Zone 6-1, B-Field PLANTs Primary Defence Zone, Lagrange Point 5**

**10 44**

Grinder 12 let his breath out in a trembling sigh as the Dagger L drifted away, a hole with slagged edges punched through its chest from behind. Suzuki Amano returned to her original position, and the as her GuAIZ R's beam sword flickered out, the mobile suit's mounted railguns deployed; a twin burst of lightning later, another Dagger L was blown off-course from the shots, allowing Grinder 12 to destroy another target in a hail of fire.

Even if Suzuki had wanted to switch units, or even if Keth had let her, she would not have made it away from the battle area in time. The Dagger Ls had fell upon them like a hammer-blow; led by a squadron of 105 Daggers, they had fought hard against this new enemy formation. Only the sudden arrival of the _Laurasia_-class _Faith of the Future_, from the nearest zone in the B Field, and two squadrons of mobile suits, had prevented them from being wiped out.

"Is that the last of them?" Grinder 12 asked, as the ragged remains of the Dagger L unit drifted away. In the distance, the other Dagger Ls formed up for a second push.

"Far from it," Suzuki said, her breath slightly uneven from all the mentally-exerting computations and heart-stopping moments she had experienced during combat. Her muscles were beginning to ache as well; whether she liked it or not, the human body still tensed up during critical moments, and she was beginning to feel as though she had spend the last hour doing heavy lifting.

With only her GuAIZ R's railguns remaining when the enemy had attacked, she had acted as close-range interception and defence for those of Grinder Bravo who could still shoot. Keth had ordered them into two-unit formations to maximize their survivability in close-contact warfare, and she had fought back-to-back with Grinder 12 for the past five minutes.

A flare of light from above them interrupted the battle; ZAFT and OMNI alike paused as they witnessed the blast that erupted outwards, towards the polar zone of the PLANTs, right where the nuclear fleet was supposed to be. Moments later, the entire area of enveloped in roiling shades of light.

"That…" Suzuki said, her words trailing off.

Keth laughed, a short sound that carried all of his relief, even through the static-filled radio channel. "Heh. What do you know… the Home Guard had something up their sleeves after all."

As the lights died down, bright flares appeared in the distance, where the OMNI main fleet supposedly was. "Hey, the OMNI forces…" Grinder 12 exclaimed, the excitement in his voice growing with each word. "They're retreating!"

Suzuki watched as all across the battlefield, OMNI mobile suits rushed back to beyond the A Field, where most of their carriers awaited. "I guess that's that then?"

"Don't relax yet, Grinder 7," Keth interrupted. "We just got shot at with nuclear weapons. This whole shit is going to go further south… it just remains to be seen how far things will drop."

Suzuki watched the OMNI mobile suits retreat, the lights of their thrusters mixing in with the backdrop of stars.

"… Yeah."

**CE 73 October 12****th****, **_**Agamemnon**_**-class command carrier **_**Fortuitous Sight**_**, OMNI Fleet Vector Zone 1, Lagrange Point 5**

**11 41**

Captain Nicias Lanner watched from his seat as the mobile suits returned to his ship. From his workstation, he could see the numbers; greyed-out codes were those who had been confirmed to have been killed in action, while yellow codes were those yet to return, and green codes were those already within his vessel.

It was a disaster. While they had started with a relatively basic strategy of advancing and engaging the enemy mobile suits further out from the fleet, their attempts at penetrating the enemy lines had been a poor show of force; it was a wonder ZAFT responded to it at all.

Granted, Nicias had the advantage of actually knowing that the warship-led OMNI pushes had been hoaxes; were he a ZAFT commander, he would probably still have sent troops in to reinforce his front just in case the enemy wasn't bluffing. But, at the same time, he was confused that the carefully thought-out battle plans disseminated to all the captains before their launch from Luna had been replaced with over-aggressive, seemingly randomized assaults into the fray.

Now that he had seen the results of that failed surprise assault from the polar regions, he had realized why.

There was no way he wouldn't recognize that light again.

"Captain?" someone asked. "All mobile suits are in. We can move off now."

"Get us going," Nicias replied, trying to keep the feeling of disgust from seeping into his voice. "We don't have any business here anymore."

"Captain," his second in command said. Commander Helen Tessarion shot her captain a look, a sign of warning. A second later, her eyes darted towards the woman seated in what was supposed to be the ship XO's seat, furiously keying in a message to her comrades. She was ranked a full Captain as well, and has been assigned to the ship as an "intel ops agent"; or at least, that was what she had told Nicias when he had asked. Her tone had made it clear that he wasn't to ask more.

Thankfully, she hadn't heard what Nicias had said.

Nicias sighed. "I understand." _I'll settle this with them at a later date. But right now…_

_Right now, we have to get ready. _

_For the beginning of a new and terrible war._

**CE 73 October 17****th****, **_**Gondwana**_**-class command carrier **_**Gondwana**_**, Lagrange Point 5**

**10 44**

Suzuki Amano wondered what she had done to deserve this.

It had been barely a week after the Aprilius battle, and now she was already being assigned to a new front; unlike those who went before her in Operation Spear of Twilight, she would be going on a separate ship to Gibraltar.

Her documents had been very vague in the information department; all she knew was that she had been selected as a replacement pilot for a manoeuvre unit in the field, and that they were going to perform mostly land-based operations.

Like all MS pilots, Suzuki was trained to fight in both gravity and zero-G conditions, but her current experience only pertained to the latter. Her papers had mentioned the Special Field Operation Corps, a group of ZAFT pilots who specialized in warfare behind enemy lines, or unconventional fighting means. Further deployment into a combat team would be made known to her once she was on Earth.

Still, orders were orders, and she understood that ZAFT's manpower resources were barely acceptable for a military of their size. If they needed her to fill a role that she was unfamiliar with, then she would have to do so.

Absorbed in her thoughts, and fretting about her future, Suzuki Amano didn't realize where she was going until it was too late.

With a knock that sent her reeling back, Suzuki fell backwards in shock. Only Yzak Joule's hand reached out to catch her arm in time.

"C-c-c-captain Joule!" Suzuki exclaimed, her mind descending into confusion from having her thoughts interrupted by a person of particular note to her. "W-w-w-what a coincidence to m-m-meet you here, yes? Aha, ah ha ha ha…"

Yzak merely arched an eyebrow. "What's up with that overly dramatic response, Amano?"

"N-n-nothing at all," Suzuki replied, her face turning slightly red. "J-just going to my next deployment area, after all…"

"Oh yeah," Yzak said. "ZAFT's initiating a full force reshuffling. Well, you might even meet some of the people from the squadron back on the _Voltaire_…"

"D-do you know anything about the force reshuffle, sir?" Suzuki asked.

Yzak cupped his chin with his right hand. "Well, from what I can tell you, ZAFT is aiming for a defensive campaign this time. Of course, they'll also reinforce their Earth bases so they can continue to provide aid relief efforts from fortified locations. Sitting in a location and defending, however, isn't something native to ZAFT doctrine, so they're going in introduce first-strike teams in greater numbers to stave off any possible enemy assaults."

"A defensive war…?" Suzuki mused.

"We're not going to be doing any major attacking this time," Yzak replied. "Unless it's for self-defence, or in special cases, the ZAFT military won't be actively seeking a fight like back during the Bloody Valentine War."

"I… I see." Suzuki said. "That's good to hear."

"Where did you get assigned to?" Yzak asked.

Suzuki passed her papers to Yzak. "I haven't heard much about them, sir, so I don't know what to say." Suzuki replied. "But it doesn't seem easy…"

Yzak gave a short laugh. "Gibraltar, eh? So it's the Eurasian front, then. Well, as far as I can see, the Eurasians aren't too hot about the war this time; they were dealt some major damage in the drop, and their leadership underwent some changes since last year, not to mention that they've been having troubles with insurgents since the end of the Bloody Valentine War. They'll be more concerned with making sure ZAFT stays on their side of the fence than trying anything aggressive."

"So it's really an easy job after all…" Suzuki said.

"Don't bet on it, Amano," Yzak said. Suzuki noticed that his voice had taken on the same hard quality it had when he was giving orders during the battle over Junius 7. "Your area is the Special Field Operation Corps; they're the first line of defence for ZAFT assets anywhere, running missions from recon, to deep-territory strikes, and possibly even assaults on hardened key targets. Consider them the equivalent of commando forces."

"But you explained the Eurasian front, sir," Suzuki said.

"I did, but that's just for the Eurasian Front. OMNI still remains the mainline Earth military at large, and its forces and leaders are drawn from all over the world. It's common for Atlantic Federation forces to be deployed within Eurasian Federation boundaries, and those Atlantic bastards are almost too trigger-happy to be considered human." Yzak handed the papers back to Suzuki. "Of course, they won't try anything funny directly, but that makes it all the more dangerous; you'll be facing actual special warfare troops deployed to make up for their lack of freedom of action, and not just mainline pilots of OMNI."

"T-that doesn't sound good…" Suzuki remarked, anxiety slowly creeping into her mind.

"It isn't. These guys are likely experienced from the USSA War of Independence or from the various small conflicts since the past two years. You might even face Bloody Valentine War veterans yourself, and I can personally vouch that anyone who's lived through that period, Coordinator or Natural, is someone you would want to take seriously during combat."

Suzuki gulped.

"But, well, don't let that affect you," Yzak said, clapping Suzuki on the shoulder. "You're not a bad pilot, by any measure of the word. Get better, and you will make it far."

"R-right, sir," Suzuki replied.

Yzak glanced at his watch. "I still have some time left… well, Amano, I'll be off to see where your other former comrades are going. Some of them are staying with me in the Expeditionary Forces, but most of the people on the _Voltaire_ are going to be dealing with a pretty large group of new faces. See you around, Amano."

Suzuki watched for a while as Yzak walked off, until she finally mustered up enough courage to say what she wanted. "C-captain Joule!" she called out.

Yzak turned around. "Yes?"

Suzuki saluted. "T-thank you for the advice, sir!"

Yzak smirked. "Advice is just advice. Anything you do with your own two hands, at the end of the day, is your own accomplishment."

Suzuki maintained her salute for as long as she could see through the throng of people around her to Yzak, but seconds later after she dropped her arm, someone embraced her from behind.

"Eyah!"

From behind her, Grinder 6, Elisabeth McKinnan, laughed at Suzuki's shrill exclamation. "Still as easy to surprise as ever, eh, Suzi?"

"D-don't call me by that name!" Suzuki replied, her face turning fully red, trying to shake herself free from Elisabeth, the two of them close enough that she could see her own cyan irises reflected in Elisabeth's red ones. Soon enough, Rolla Ardeis, Keth Wheeldon, and the remaining members of Grinder Squadron had gathered around her.

"Man, Amano, you're aloof," Grinder 9, Calvin Kuron said. "You could at least tell us you were going to be reassigned! We didn't even know until Commander Ardeis asked us if we were going to be seeing you off!"

"W-well, I…" Suzuki stammered.

"No excuses!" Elisabeth said. "How long more to your departure?"

"A…about three hours or so," Suzuki replied.

"Alright! We're going to treat you to your last meal with us!" Elisabeth said, the excitement in her voice growing. "You're going to learn that the _Gondwana _has really supreme R-and-R facilities!"

"Eh? But I wanted to get on board early…" Suzuki said.

"Yours are terrestrial deployment orders, right?" Grinder 12, Havien Vorstnan interrupted. "You can't fool us; there's no one to report to and nothing to do once you're on board your transport."

"Humour them, Amano," Keth said. "We're not exactly happy to see you go, you know?"

"Commander…" Suzuki said.

"In times like these, especially when you're going to be deployed into an entirely different war zone, you should cherish the company of your friends more." Rolla said. "It's good to have memories you can fall back on sometimes."

"Right! Since the two commanders have given permission, let's get going!" Elisabeth cheered, and a shy-faced Suzuki was rapidly led away by her comrades.

Watching from behind, Keth laughed. "Young people these days."

"I'm not that old myself," Rolla retorted.

"Sorry, ma'am," Keth coughed. "I meant, nuggets these days…"

"That's more like it," Rolla said, a corner of her mouth turning up in a slight smile. "C'mon; let's go join them for our own well-deserved rest from all the post-battle paperwork. God knows when we'll get another chance again."

"Aye ma'am," Keth replied. "My thoughts exactly."

As the two veterans rejoined the group, Rolla's thoughts extended to Suzuki's deployment orders, and to a fellow veteran she once worked alongside with, now on Earth in the Special Field Operation Corps.

Given her friend's disposition, she would have undoubtedly tried something like trying to get back into space with a DINN the moment she had heard of the attack. Rolla allowed herself a small chuckle at the mental image. Grace Sakerfield was never the type to let trivialities get in her way.

_Grace… if she does end up under you, protect her. Let her grow. There are enough grudge-ridden people like us. _

_The world, and the future of the Earth Sphere, needs more of those willing to fight for tomorrow. It needs more people who've never had the curse of being chained down by the wars of yesteryear._

**Afterword: **_Now that we've finally crossed over into the Second bloody Valentine War, this is a chapter with a fresh face, from an opposite viewpoint, during the Battle of Aprilius One, the key opening battle to the Second Bloody Valentine War. _

_While I used several characters to gain a wider view of the whole battle, I also tried to add in an OMNI viewpoint from those who weren't involved in the nuclear attack, since we've already received great screen-time from the Blue Cosmos lackeys; I wanted to at least have a small showcase for the reactions of those who __**weren't **__told by their scumbag comrades that they were just being strung up for bait while Blue Cosmos rolled 2D6 for their sneak attack (obviously enough, they failed their dice roll badly, and even screwed up their Detection rolls). _

_I do realize that there's a chunk of two years missing in this, but as SEED Destiny Astray already covers the USSA War of Independence, there isn't much for me to add in beyond the standard story from either the freedom fighter viewpoint or the MS pilot viewpoint, both of which were already in quite the number throughout this series of stories.  
><em>


	27. Chapter 27: Poseidon's Knights

_**Author's Note:**_

_This fanfic is to write upon some of the events in Gundam SEED and SEED Destiny that are not touched upon or mentioned in-series, but their dates are listed on GundamWikia and are thus treated as part of canon. They are therefore based upon actual happenings in the Cosmic Era universe, but the events within them are open to interpretation. This fanfic is also an attempt at showcasing a "what-if" of all sides involved in the wars, and how some of the events within the show might have come to be._

_Because there are no set dates within the SEED Destiny series, the dates here are displayed only for approximation of the events' chronological placing to the end of the Second Bloody Valentine War, and are not indicative of the exact timeframes of any events that occur in SEED Destiny._

**Gundam SEED: Tales of the Cosmic Era**

**Chapter 27: Poseidon's Knights**

**CE 73 October 18****th****, 190 kilometres offshore Syracuse in the Ionian Sea, Eurasian Federation Yellow Zone Naval Region**

**23 04**

The _Vosgulov_-class assault submarine _Mithril Sword_ cruised silently through the enveloping waters, its streamlined form leaving little disturbance in the underwater currents. Its exterior lights were off, and the submarine, being nearly two kilometres below the surface, was impossible to sight with eyes alone.

Captain Bandar bin Sharazad watched his crew at work, their faces illuminated by the lights from their console screens. His sonar officer, Bredan Halvey, swallowed, and turned to look at his captain. "Contact remains at 150 kilometres off starboard. They're circling. In ten minutes they'll cross into the Ionian Sea, leaving us a clear road into the Mediterranean-"

"Keep watching them," Bandar replied. "Until the DINN flights are ready to return, we will remain on silent station."

Bredan nodded. "Yes, sir."

Bandar watched as the contact continued its movement. Given the data his crew had gathered, the single contact was likely an _Arkansas_-class or _Des Monies_-class cruiser, a capital warship of OMNI. While this spelled trouble for the DINN SEIT flights above the sea, gathering data on enemy line defences in the shore regions of Central Europe, the fact that no reports had come through yet was a good sign that they remained undetected.

"The signal buoys are picking up an encrypted message." Glaces Hara, his communications officer, turned to face him. "They've complete their recon mission of Eurasian Federation shore defences in this region… and they've also confirmed the presence of an _Arkansas_-class cruiser in the region."

"Shit," Bandar replied, pulling on the rim of his cap. The tricky part of OMNI's cruisers was that they could fulfil both anti-air and anti-ship roles if pressed to do so, and he was going to expose himself if he needed to recover the DINN SEITs. If it were a _Des Moines_-class cruiser, he could still trust the DINNs to reliably outrun its weapons range, but an _Arkansas_-class was much more likely to catch the DINNs the moment they dropped within range or tried to get close.

The second part of the equation was his. While he could reliably take on any warship in single combat, his primary mission was reconnaissance, and not conflict. Right now, both ZAFT and OMNI were locked on the Eurasian front; neither side was willing to commit to a bloody war as long as the fallout from the Junius 7 Incident remained unresolved. Even if the Atlantic Federation was raring to go, the rest of its allies, being the ones afflicted with more troubles, had more important things to do than wage bloody war.

"If only we could move faster than them…" Bandar mused.

"Captain?" Luciano Durgan, his navigation officer, asked.

"It's nothing, Luciano," Bandar replied. "Maintain silent running."

Bandar watched the sonar screen intently. The IFFs of the DINN SEITs were circling around the far side of their area, preventing from coming into the cruiser's weapons range; the ship itself just passed over the _Mithril Sword_, and was going to continue into the Ionian Sea. In ten minutes, he could surface to pick them up.

"Do you think they might have guessed at the DINN SEIT's presence, Captain?" Bandar's second-in-command, Hanasaki Genbu, remarked. "Their approach pattern is awfully too close to be coincidental."

"Perhaps," Bandar replied. "It'll make for a great position to double back on us. Have you seen a cruiser turn, Genbu?"

"Admittedly not in live combat," the younger commander, one of the first batch of ZAFT operators to graduate after the end of the Bloody Valentine War, replied.

"They're quite fast," Bandar said. "I've seen some training videos, and they're bullshit; most of the footage were from the Casablanca Sea Battle and the JOSH-A battle, where they were forced to defend a location. If we let them take the initiative in mobile battle, our chances of winning will drop by a lot."

"The _Vosgulov_-class should be powerful enough to outgun and outmanoeuvre them." Genbu replied.

"Outgun, I'll agree with that. But it's impossible for us to outmanoeuvre them. Not only are their cruisers unburdened by carrier duties, they're built for speed as well. ZAFT's goals for the _Vosgulov_-class submarines were armour and endurance; from there, they've managed to change the production design enough to include anti-ship combat, but don't be fooled; the weapons of both sides are powerful enough to gut each other in a single hit if you're not careful."

"I understand, sir," Genbu replied. "In this case, our GOOhN squadrons or the Guul subflight units would be a better option."

"I'd agree with that if not for our orders to avoid combat, and the _Arkansas_-class is especially adept at picking air targets out; automated flyers are hardly a threat to them." Bandar said. "And the more ZAFT personnel we place out there, the more chances of someone getting holed with anti-submarine munitions. We'll need to pull a rescue op, and from there things are just going to snowball. For now, we'll just watch and wait."

"Right, sir," Genbu replied.

Five more minutes of silence passed when Bandar heard the opposite of what he expected. "I'm picking up something," Bredan replied. "The cruiser's sound has changed; it's picking up speed!"

Bandar watched in disbelief as the sonar contact on the screen reversed its direction, and inched closer to his submarine instead. "Identify approach time!"

"Four minutes! They're running loud!"

"Running loud" was a term no captain of a _Vosgulov_-class wanted to hear against an enemy; it meant that the enemy was travelling at top speed, and that they were about to engage in ship-to-ship combat. "Weapons! Load two tubes with Trident torpedoes! Drain the ballast tanks and prepare for emergency surfacing! Glaces, get the DINNs ready for an emergency landing!" Bandar ordered.

"Aye sir, Tridents loaded, tubes one and two sealed. Awaiting flooding." Varunash Gandory, his weapons officer, replied.

"Emptying the tanks! Preparing to surface!" Luciano answered.

"Contact established. They're ready anytime, sir," Glaces replied.

The _Mithril Sword _shook as it shot towards the surface of the Mediterranean, its massive form breaking from the water like that of a sea monster's in a massive spray of seawater. Overhead, the DINN SEIT squadron circled, waiting to land.

The top bay doors of the submarine opened, excess water showering down upon the mechanics inside as they prepared to secure the DINNs in the shortest time possible. The three DINN SEITs entered the _Mithril Sword_ as fast as they could; one of them even clipped its wing on the hangar door, dropping minor debris down on the mechanics.

"They're in, sir," Glaces replied.

"New signal!" Bredan replied. "Match found; heavy torpedoes incoming! Three of them, approaching from seven, at twenty-degree incline from ship axis! They're going to hit us in the bridge!"

"Shut the hatches!" Bandar ordered. "Luciano, as soon as the _Mithril Sword_ is sealed, engage full speed and dive! Don't bother with directional changes!" Turning to Varunash, he issued a new set of orders. "Fire sonar disruption charges! Load tubes one through four with high-explosive torpedoes!"

"Sonar charges away," Varunash replied, his voice uncharacteristically calm amidst the red lighting and frantic movements of his other comrades. "Torpedo tubes armed."

Beside the _Mithril Sword's_ bridge, small ports opened; miniature buoys shot out, deploying antenna from their top and bottom segments, emitting sonar waves; the end result was that the signature of the _Vosgulov_-class submarine was lost in a cacophony of signals. The torpedoes barely missed their mark, one of them three meters from the bridge of the submarine, as they shot into the depths of the sea.

"Enemy contact is approaching us at top speed!" Bredan said. "They'll be directly over us in thirty seconds!"

"Luciano, switch manoeuvring mode to super-manoeuvrability. Bredan, synch your station with Varunash's; prepare to launch torpedoes on my command."

"Roger," both officers replied, working at their stations.

"Captain, the third aerial hangar bay is reporting a minor leak in the top hatch," Glaces said. "They said a DINN clipped the edges on its way in."

"Minor?" Bandar asked.

"Class-D," Glaces replied.

Bandar muttered a swear word in Arabic. From the viewpoint of someone on-site, a Class-D leak was akin to seeing constant dripping. "Tell them to get ready to patch it the moment I give the clearance to. Liquid cement, welding, I don't need to know the specifics. I don't want to take the chance of it widening into something major."

"Yes, sir," Glaces replied.

"Enemy contact just passed above us," Bredan replied. "They're turning!"

"Turning?" Genbu replied, confusion present in this tone.

"They're doing to enter a manoeuvrability contest," Bandar said. "I expected them to use their speed to pull out of range for another torpedo shot."

"They can't use torpedoes at this range either," Genbu said.

"They don't need to," Bandar said. "Luciano, ease off to a negative twenty-degree incline, and prepare to turn to starboard on my mark. Once the turn has been executed, switch engines to standard mode and engage full power."

"Aye, sir!" Luciano replied.

The _Mithril Sword_ cut through the deep waters, all presence of stealth abandoned in order to make full use of its innate capabilities. A massive cloud of bubbles trailed from its rear, proof that its six pump-jet propulsors were working at full power to move the behemoth. Bubbles occasionally slipped from its tail-planes; the speed at which they cut through the water was so fast that it occasionally left small pockets of air behind.

"The enemy is turning!" Bredan replied. "Reading two new signatures approaching from two-hundred-ten, on our port side! Forty-five degree incline from ship axis, and easing out!" The young officer verified the new sonar signatures, turning to face Bandar with panic in his eyes. "They're close-range torpedoes, sir!"

"A launch from that angle?" Genbu said, incredulity lacing his tone.

"HGSLMs," Bandar said. "High-Angle Surface-Launched Munitions. It's a sub hunter, but given the similarities between OMNI's cruiser classes, I'm not surprised that they'll have them on an anti-air cruiser."

"Surely they won't be as accurate as when launched by a _Des Monies_-class," Genbu said. "An _Arkansas_-class would lack the necessary dedicated underwater tracking equipment."

"Basic necessities are still there," Bandar replied. "That said, if we didn't speed out from under them, they would have just unleashed air-delivered depth charges on us. Just because they're specialized towards anti-air, Genbu, doesn't mean that they can't fulfil the roles they were originally built for."

Bandar watched the torpedoes approach his submarine. "Varunash, load two more sonar disruptors on the first and third tube. Launch them immediately after the turn. Luciano, on my mark."

"Disruptors loaded," Varunash replied.

"Ready," Luciano replied.

Bandar waited for five seconds. "Mark!"

The _Mithril Sword's_ port propulsors went into overdrive; at the same time, its starboard propulsors scaled back to a fraction of their former output. The result was the submarine executing a sharp turn that was an impossible feat for any conventional OMNI submarine; only a _Vosgulov_-class assault submarine, built from the modified hull of a space warship project, and reinforced for operation deep underneath the roiling waves of Earth's oceans, could handle such abuse in an emergency.

Bandar held on tight to the support poles situated around the bridge of his vessel as the entire ship's horizontal plane shifted, and the submarine tilted towards its starboard, completing its turn at a tight angle. The submarine's port propulsor was directing its thrust downwards, courtesy of two deflector plates mounted behind that allowed the submarine to vector the output of its propulsor engines to some extent, emulating the same thrust-vectoring capabilities of smaller aircraft. It was these same deflector plates that allowed ZAFT naval forces to go toe-to-toe with OMNI naval warships; were they any slower, the _Vosgulov_-class assault submarines would be no better than glorified, over-expensive carriers.

Granted, they were still expensive, but they were at least no longer glorified mobile suit transports.

Two launch ports on the starboard side, located next to the base of the _Mithril Sword's _bridge, opened up, launching two sonar disruption units. Bandar, from the corner of his eye, watched as Bredan's screen was temporarily overwhelmed by the output of the disruption units; seconds later, the two approaching torpedoes vanished from the screen as well.

Bandar frowned, easing off his stance as the submarine completed its 180-degree turn, levelled itself, and switched its engines to high-speed mode, dashing for the wider waters of the Mediterranean. "Something's not right. Bredan, where's the warship heading to?"

"Passing by our starboard side, sir," Bredan replied. "They've cut speed."

Bandar watched as the sonar signature of the OMNI warship was left behind, edging out of the sensor screen as the _Mithril Sword_ left the vessel behind.

"Alright," Bandar said. "Glaces, bring the ship back to alert status, get the repair crews working. Varunash, flush the torpedo tubes, do a de-arming check for all munitions. Luciano, bring us a further 100 kilometres before moving into cruising mode. Plot a course towards Gibraltar."

"R… right, sir," Genbu replied, leaving the bridge.

As the bridge crew went about their tasks, Genbu turned to Bandar. "We're not retaliating, sir?"

"There's no need to, Genbu." Bandar replied. "Think about it for a second; during the first torpedo attack, we barely avoided their first wave. Bredan, pull up the logs for a second; how close were the torpedoes from the first wave?"

"On it, sir," Bredan replied. "Two torpedoes missed by thirteen meters and twenty-four meters respectively." He was silent for a moment. "A third torpedo missed by three meters."

"Three meters…" Genbu mused. "If it were a high-explosive proximity-triggered warhead, even the detonation would be enough to put cracks in our hull."

"Well, it wasn't." Bandar replied. "A torpedo with an armour-piercing warhead wouldn't have travelled in a straight line either. That was a dud shot."

"A… dud shot?" Genbu asked. "It wasn't a live torpedo?"

Banda shook his head. "Nor were the two short-range torpedoes that came later. There were numerous chances where OMNI cruisers and _Vosgulov_-class submarines engaged in one-on-one combatin the previous war; just before I reached Kaohsiung; the vessel I served on was nearly sunk when a lone _Des Moines_-class cruiser used the detonation of air-launched naval mines to hide the approach signature of two heavy torpedoes; it was a high-explosive shot, followed by an armour-piercing one."

"And OMNI warships never engage in spread torpedo shots unless it's to disable aquatic mobile suits," Genbu said. "Even if they were checking for GOOhNs, those torpedoes would have detonated away from us, and not at us."

"That would be correct," Bandar replied. "Furthermore, during the last siege at Kaohsiung in the previous war, there was a recorded case where an _Arkansas_-class cruiser successfully drove two submarines away from a flotilla of resupply vessels by launching four short-range torpedoes; with a pincer attack, they used high-explosive warheads to create a temporary mask, before hitting one of the submarines from another side with a pair of armour-piercing shots." Bandar looked around the bridge. "The submarine that retreated was the _Mithril Sword_; I was serving on board as its XO at that time."

"And none of those strategies were present during this battle," Genbu said, his mind putting the piece together. "This is a message for us, isn't it? That their technology is no longer behind ours."

"Not really just for us," Bandar replied. "It's for the whole of ZAFT. It's a warning to watch where we choose to tread."

**CE 73 October 18****th****, **_**Arkansas**_**-class cruiser **_**Potemkin**_**,****en route to Taranto Naval Base, Eurasian Federation Blue Zone Naval Region**

**23 57**

Most of the bridge had been emptied of personnel, as it was supposed to be during the night shift; only a skeleton crew of junior officers remained. Most of them, being fresh graduates of the OMNI Navy, had been too inexperienced to serve in combat, and they had sat out the battle, watching the more experienced permanent crew of the _Potemkin_ execute their tasks.

Lieutenant Commander Anatoly Hekovic, the_ Potemkin's_ executive officer, sat in his chair, filling out a report for the recent skirmish. The sounds of typing ceased as he pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. "That took years off my life."

Lieutenant Anya Graden, the chief weapons officer, chuckled; her own consoles were alight with weapon status reports. "All things considered, our lives have been pretty good so far."

"It's all fine for us to display just how much our capabilities have been improved thanks to the Naval Improvement Plan, but honestly, announcing our intentions in a non-sanctioned mock battle can never a good thing." Anatoly grumbled. "Intelligence reasons aside, if that ZAFT captain had been looking for trouble, we might have been goners."

A soft hissing sound filled the background as the automated doors to the bridge slid open. "That's why you're my XO, Anatoly," Captain Zanaya Helviya replied. "With you to worry about such matters for me, I'll never go wrong."

Anya chuckled again as Anatoly jumped a little in his seat. "Captain! This is no laughing matter! If such an incident were to escalate into full-blown war…"

"I know. However, those warheads wouldn't have done anything even if they had hit the enemy. On the other hand, we've gained valuable data on our cruisers."

"Are you referring to the Naval Improvement Plan?" Anatoly asked. "Trying to fit the capabilities of both the _Des Moines_ and _Arkansas_-class vessels into a single hull…"

"I'm sure you all know that we got permission from Vaunt Heavy Industries, as well as OMNI EUROCOM, to use the new upgrades to the _Arkansas_-class as we see fit." Zanaya said. "I'd say that we achieved a great deal during this battle; not only did we outmanoeuvre the opponent, we also got new data on the integration between our new detection systems. And to think that we were the first ones to be refitted, and in such a short time…"

"Still, using an unwitting and unknowing ZAFT force as part of our test… It's too dangerous." Anatoly replied. "If the enemy had been serious…"

Zanaya typed away at her datapad, formulating a second set of reports. "I had no doubt they were. I was too, Anatoly. And we've proved that our torpedoes' remote activation can operate even under passive combat jamming conditions. That includes changing their settings from proximity detonation to timed fuses, automatic seeking, and even emergency deactivation. We didn't have any duds on board, you know." She turned to Anya, ignoring a sighing Anatoly. "Anything to add to your own?"

"Nothing, ma'am," Anya replied. "The remote devices worked beautifully even at 40% jamming, and the attached recovery devices worked fine as well."

Anatoly still looked unconvinced. "I know that, but the Eurasian Federation is hardly in a position to make random moves. We're currently allied with the Atlantic Federation, but at the same time we're pulling out of Turkey, our keystone area against ZAFT encroachment." He paused, working on his own report for a moment. "Rumours have it that ZAFT's preparing to move in to set up a significant presence in the area… what with their vector towards the Gulnahan Ravine and all."

"We can't help it," Zanaya replied unconcernedly. "The local government has been making too much noise in the past few months; it's only intensified since the Battle of Aprilius One. It's obvious they want to become a satellite state of the PLANTs, and for now, the PLANTs are returning the favour, but things won't hold out."

Zanaya paused for a while before continuing. "With the success of ZAFT's Operation Spear of Twilight, especially at the Carpentaria Military Establishment, taking the fight to them now would only be a needless waste of manpower and resources. Our own battles near Gibraltar Base has made it clear that the Eurasian Federation won't be able hold back a ZAFT offensive, judging by how our forces were quickly repulsed; we're still too tied up with the recent disaster, as well as trying to hunt down the various insurgents springing up, to bother with ZAFT."

Anatoly was quiet for a moment. "Not to mention the Atlantic Federation using that recent treaty to send troops over."

"That's a matter as well," Anya said. "It's sad, but we need to borrow their strength to prevent our boundaries from fragmenting. Even so, cases of human rights abuse are being logged every day, both by our own forces, and by civilian parties. At this rate, we'll be at loggerheads with both ZAFT and the Atlantic Federation."

Zanaya continued her work without looking up. "Regardless, the Eurasian Federation wants to solidify its hold on its core territories in Europe. ZAFT won't bother invading the Russian territories, so if full-blown combat were to resume, the hammer blow would once again fall on the Saragossa Defence Line, and behind it, Geneva. As bad as things are, we need the Atlantic Federation… for the time being.

Anya shut off her workstation. "However, since the shift of OMNI's main HQ to Iceland, I sometimes wonder if they'll ignore the remaining OMNI EUROCOM at Geneva, and head straight for the main prize instead."

"I'd be surprised if they don't, honestly." Anatoly said. "Still, Turkey…"

"I'm not too worried about that," Anya said. "There might have been increases in insurgencies since the end of the Bloody Valentine War, and especially after the Junius 7 Drop incident, but unlike what most people fear, these insurgencies are either seeking to establish an independent state, or are against the Eurasian Federation's current moderate stance against ZAFT. Not the kind of righteous insurgency that ZAFT would want to support. At least, not openly."

"I hope you're right," Anatoly said. "With a base already in the Black Sea, we'll be hard-pressed to stop ZAFT once it decides to commit fully in the region."

Zanaya gave a short laugh. "At that time, the only thing we need to do is what we know best, and do the best at."

**CE 73 October 16****th****, ?, ?, Slovakia, Eurasian Federation**

**12 03**

The soldier watched the man in front of him, as he sat down the headset. "I'm done for the day, Rasel," he said. "The channel's silent."

"Did you accomplish what you wanted to do, sir?" Rasel asked.

The man laughed. "Please, Rasel, no honorifics around here. We're all insurgents in these parts. Just call me Bolvar."

"Old habits die hard, I guess. Still, it's hard to believe that I'll be fighting alongside a decorated war hero at this time in my life." Rasel said. "So, did any ZAFT forces in the vicinity pick up our piggybacked message?"

"That they did, and I made sure to make the encryption easy enough to crack." Bolvar Kasavok said. "No replies, but if they do agree, we'll be able to see a liberated Eurasia soon."

_And with that, a Eurasia free from the grasp of the Atlantic Federation…!_

**Afterword:**_ Back after a period of drought.I've long wanted to do a submarine chapter, but I never really found a chance._ _Given how SEED Destiny simply pushes all the blame to the Earth Alliance in general, I wanted to use this chapter to also flesh out the internal politics in-between the various super-nations involved. More importantly, I wanted the Earth Alliance in general to be seen as heaving learnt from the lessons of the previous war.  
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_And with this, we're now seven chapters from the end. It'll be such a joy (a mind-rending one) to try and tie up all of the scattered political viewpoints in SEED Destiny together, that's for sure... _


	28. Chapter 28: The Hammer From Heaven

_**Author's Note:**_

_This fanfic is to write upon some of the events in Gundam SEED and SEED Destiny that are not touched upon or mentioned in-series, but their dates are listed on GundamWikia and are thus treated as part of canon. They are therefore based upon actual happenings in the Cosmic Era universe, but the events within them are open to interpretation. This fanfic is also an attempt at showcasing a "what-if" of all sides involved in the wars, and how some of the events within the show might have come to be._

_Because there are no set dates within the SEED Destiny series, the dates here are displayed only for approximation of the events' chronological placing to the end of the Second Bloody Valentine War, and are not indicative of the exact timeframes of any events that occur in SEED Destiny._

**Gundam SEED: Tales of the Cosmic Era**

**Chapter 28: The Hammer From Heaven **

**CE 73 October 20****th****, Space Station **_**Ame-no-Mishihara**_**, Lagrange Point unknown, Orb Union space territory**

**23 41**

Rondo Mina Sahaku watched with pointed interest from a viewing room as a pair of twins went about their battle plans. She had heard of the Orb Recon Brigade, but as was the habit of the people within the higher echelons of the Orb Union, most of them preferred to keep their cards hidden.

Such was the rootedness of their customs that they had kept them long after the unification of the original inhabitants of the Orb Union territory. Outside of the standard military, cooperation between the ruling nobility of Orb was a rare incident. It made for hatching contingency plans difficult.

It also often brought surprises such as the Orb Recon Brigade. Mina didn't know which noble family had brought them into existence, but given the nature of their work and the ruthlessness in which they considered their targets, both the Seiran and Uzumi families were out of consideration. But power, no matter who wielded it, was still beneficial to her, so long as it was wielded under the name of the Orb Union.

Down at one of the numerous hangars within the space station, _Ame-no-Mishihara_, Orb's sole space asset since CE 71, Commander Kananoh Hawaki and Lieutenant Commander Kananoh Houka listened intently as one of their people reported his findings, handing over several documents and records to the two commanders of the Recon Brigade's 2nd Armoured Contingent. ZAFT had announced that Lacus Clyne had returned to them in this hour of uncertainly, and had the footage to back it up.

What jarred both of them was the fact that as far as they knew, Lacus Clyne was currently living in Orb. As Hawaki scrutinized the footage, Houka brought up a list of contacts still within ZAFT.

"I can't find anything wrong with this," Hawaki said, handing the laptop to Houka. "This is pretty much a live concert, and if they're using image manipulation to get Miss Clyne's face, then that is either an expert at work, or the people and government of ZAFT are setting up for the biggest joke of the century."

"Or cosmetic surgery. It would be easy for ZAFT to do so." Houka replied darkly.

"Yet no one suspects them," Hawaki remarked. "If she looks the same, then the only thing that could give her away is her voice. From what I can hear though, it's…"

"… pretty much Lacus Clyne's voice," Houka finished the line of thought. "Our agents have done their field analysis work. It's her voice, down to the last few octaves. Any discrepancies can be chalked up to human nature."

"Still," Hawaki said, "her physical figure is suspicious. It's standing out too much for people to not notice the difference-"

Houka cleared her throat and shot a glare at her twin sister, causing the usually-confident Hawaki to falter in her speech. "R… right," Hawaki said, remembering their teenage memories.

Houka put on her best neutral voice as she finished her sister's line of thought. "It's an explainable occurrence, is what I'm saying. The thing is, with our information network, we'll know if Lacus Clyne is gone. Kae will have notified us."

"Then perhaps the reason why she has not notified you," Rondo Mina Sahaku said, joining into the conversation of the two younger twins from behind them, "Is because there is nothing wrong with Lacus Clyne. Or at least, the true one who's staying in Orb."

"Nothing wrong…" Houka said, her voice trailing off.

"In this day and age, creating a body double is nothing out of the ordinary," Mina said. "It has been done numerous times in the past, even before the advent of the Cosmic Era calendar. Our times just make it easier for any interested parties to do so."

Mina gestured towards the twins. "Your bloodline is a perfect example of what miracles nature is fully capable of. My bloodline is a demonstration of mankind's prowess infused into that every same miracle. And yet, individuality is retained." She turned to walk away, leaving a final message for the two commanders. "At this point, assume anything is possible."

Hawaki bowed. "I greatly appreciate your advice, Miss Sahaku."

Houka merely frowned, and was about to turn to her sister when Hawaki began issuing orders. "Houka, get some people to continue monitoring the situation in ZAFT. I'll need to speak with Kae about this."

Houka tilted her head in puzzlement. "What are you going to do?"

"We've been focusing too much on the 'how', and not enough on the 'now'. Do you know what Miss Sahaku meant by 'individuality is retained'? Even amongst us twins, we have slight differences."

Houka's eyes widened in understanding, as she recited a line from an old saying their parents had told them before. "A person can only live as one of its kind…"

"… If two exist, one of the lives has to be shed." Hawaki finished her sister's sentence, the product of an old folklore. "The Second Bloody Valentine War has finally reached Orb's shores."

**CE 73 October 21****st****, unspecified location on the Orb Union mainland**

**05 11**

Lieutenant Kouen Kabira glanced at his watch, watching the men move from the shore and onto the forest path. Thankfully, the underwater surveillance equipment that the Orb Military had just installed had performed well enough; they managed to detect just the faintest trace of the enemy's units. They had landed here, and now, as a soldier of the Orb Recon Brigade, he had been sent here to stop them.

His comms gear, however, was frustratingly silent, punctuated only occasionally by a burst of static. He was almost itching for Commander Kousaka Kae to give the order; no matter how he looked, those men were wearing amphibious gear used only by ZAFT forces, and they were encroaching on the house where the heroes of the previous Bloody Valentine War resided in.

However, the message had come in too late to scramble a proper force. With the Seirans' declaration of joining the Earth Alliance as an ally, the few of Orb's special forces, especially the Orb Recon Brigade, had been mobilized by high command and placed on high alert. Even a junior officer like Kabira could see that it was less for security and more of the ruling families' machinations; the less number of forces that were free, the less likely something drastic would be done.

The Orb Recon Brigade was an independent unit formed by one of the noble families of the Orb Union's upper echelons. Included in its roster were the 1101st and 1109th Special Forces Infantry Battalions, the 63rd Tactical Air Support Wing, and the Onogoro Independent Armour Tactics Battalion; the pilots who made up the Armoured Contingents of the Recon Brigade. Since the revival of Orb, however, they had been kept busy; strong as they were, their numbers were never many, and prior to the Battle of Orb in the first war some of the Brigade's component units had actually been understaffed. During that battle, all the units in the Orb Recon Brigade had taken losses, some more so than others; they had all been stretched thin, and the infantry battalions were no exception.

With the Seirans playing politics, those who opposed them, and who had a more pragmatic view of world politics, had ordered the Brigade to deploy to key locations for various special missions. The Brigade's own MS forces were barely there; only the 4th and 5th Armoured Contingents were all full strength and present in Orb. Mei Kenroukuen, the leader of the 2-pilot 6th Armoured Contingent, was missing; Cayne Hastler and the 3rd Armoured Contingent were still away on their unnamed mission, as was Amaki Reishou, the overall commander of the Brigade's MS forces, and the commander of the 1st Armoured Contingent.

Everything was further complicated by the fact that the Seirans and their supporters currently had a majority of the government and ruling council under their thrall; if not in heart, then probably in money. Even as the Brigade moved to protect Orb's saviours, Seiran forces had moved to prevent them from mobilizing, calling their actions "fuelled by unsubstantiated rumours" which would "undermine the overall defence of the nation by leaving holes in its overall structure". Kouen Kabira clenched his teeth as he remembered the address made by Yuna Roma Seiran to Orb just a day ago; it was the bullshit typical of politicians hungering for something.

In the first place, if the Brigade was needed to plug holes usually filled by regular forces, then something, or someone, had messed up very badly somewhere.

Not helping his current situation, of course, was the fact that council member Cagalli Yula Atha had kept her "friends" rather close to herself. Given her young age, it was understandable that she didn't trust those around here, and nor would the people who commanded the Brigade trust her with their own secrets; but at times like this, a direct, reliable line to those inside the mansion would have helped immensely.

Kabira shook his head. "Politics and politicians," he muttered.

As he watched the commandos approach the mansion through the scope of his rifle, the comm device clicked open. "Red Fang 1 to War Sword Leader. We're ready."

"Blood Lance 1 to War Sword Leader, same here."

"Crimson Knife 1 to War Sword Leader, ready."

Kabira watched as the commandos began trying to break through the front gate. After Commander Kousaka's orders, all he could get in fifteen minutes were 12 men, now split into groups of three each. The commandos had at least two or three men for every one of theirs; judging by their gear and actions, Kabira was guessing that they didn't want to resort to using the MSes they had stashed somewhere, if possible.

"War Sword Leader to Tower 1, request permission to engage."

The comm was silent for a moment, and Kabira was about to repeat his message when Commander Kousaka Kae's response came through. "Eliminate them. Don't let them harm the people in that mansion."

"Roger," Kabira said, fingers moving quickly to switch his comm channels. "We'll hit them on my command. Crimson, engage them and fall back through the forest to point B. Leave Blood to cover your tracks."

Kabira exhaled as the team leaders sent their acknowledgements. "Three, two, one… now!"

Two of the ZAFT commandoes went down as the soldiers of Crimson Knife opened fire, their shots hitting their chosen targets. As expected of the enemy, the others took to the ground rather than try to take their foes head-on; splinters of wood flew as Crimson Knife dived to cover, wood pieces showering upon them.

Crimson Knife 1 watched as the commandos quickly split into two teams; what looked to be nearly fifteen men ran off into the mansion interior, while the rest began to lay down cover fire, letting their comrades approach.

"They won't take the bait fully, as expected," Kabira mused. "Red Fang, you're up; get into the mansion from C Route and halt those inside the mansion."

The background noise from Red Fang's transmission told him all he needed to know before Red Fang 1 had finished his sentence. "This is Red Fang 1, I'm currently engaged by enemy forces from another vector! They're not in the same gear, but they're just as well-trained."

Kabira spat. "War Sword to Red Fang, prioritize your survival and fall back to a defensible location. Crimson, Blood, try and disengage, then move to help Red Fang." He raised his rifle. "War Sword, we're going into the mansion. Don't lag behind!"

Four men rushed out of the forest, closing the distance to the rear wall of the mansion in a sprint; they jumped to grab ahold of the ledge at the top, and with their physical strength, easily scaled up the wall. By the time the commandos at the gate noticed them, they were all over the wall; one of the commandos who turned to take aim collapsed to the ground, his grip on his rifle quickly turning slack, as the soldiers of Crimson Knife and Blood Lance laid down a wave of cover fire.

Giving a silent word of thanks to the two teams, Kabira dropped down onto the grass on the other side, bringing his rifle up as quickly as possible. A swinging wooden door told Kabira everything; motioning for his team to get in, the four men proceeded into the building.

Gunshots could be heard echoing from within the building; as the commandos from both sides were equipped with silencers, Kabira took that sound to mean a good thing, that the building inhabitants were awake and fighting back.

Rounding a corner, Kabira ran into a group of five commandos, firing at a target. One of them ceased, motioning for his teammates to follow him forward, and that was when Kabira struck; the four-men War Sword fireteam struck out with their weapons, killing all but one of the enemy with their first few shots. The last commando fired back, and War Sword 2, who had been standing beside Kabira, collapsed towards their rear, his head snapping backwards in the characteristic manner of a fatal headshot. A second burst of fire struck the enemy commando, the wallpaper behind him shredding in a shower of 5.56mm rounds.

Kabira turned to look at the casualty for a moment; a second was more than enough to confirm his thoughts, and he motioned for the rest to follow him in the pursuit. They were on home ground; retrieval and burial could be done any time afterwards. What was important was eliminating the threat.

"This is Crimson Knife to War Sword, our targets have disengaged, I repeat, our targets have completed disengagement and have entered the building. Be aware of increased enemy forces. We're currently giving pursuit with Blood Lance."

Kabira halted as he stopped just short of another corner; the commandos in front of them had been smart, and had posted two on rear watch the moment they realized that five of them were missing. Plaster splintered off the corner and walls as they laid down suppressive fire; the characteristic, booming reports of pistols firing high-powered cartridges were set clearly against the barely-audible staccato bursts from the enemy commandos' guns, the similarly-sounding semi-automatic fire from the Brigade's own soldiers, and the sound of bullets striking the walls and floor.

"Red Fang to War Sword, we've fought off the attackers. We have no ID on them; they're not wearing any insignia. Their tactics were good, though."

"Roger that," Kabira replied. "Red Fang, link up with Crimson and Blood, and sweep the perimeter before going in."

"Roger that."

Kabira peeked out as fragments stopped flying off the walls and the corner he was hiding behind; he turned as fast as he could, but all he saw was a foot, as the commandos continued chasing their target. Kabira motioned forward, and War Sword ran with him.

The first moment he realized something was wrong was when the sound of footsteps from the enemy commandos in front were missing. Before he could stop, War Sword, running along a corridor with a T-junction, had rounded another corner, and found themselves staring down the barrels of six guns.

Kabira barely made it; turning, he dived away from the corridor, and managed to escape the hail of gunfire. Another War Sword soldier did the same, hitting the ground beside him. The third man managed to stop, and fell on his rear as the commandos opened fire; scrambling backwards, he quickly put himself behind the corner.

Kabira closed his eyes for a moment, before plucking a grenade from his vest pouch; the other two soldiers of War Sword quickly switched their rifles to the automatic setting. Counting to three, he pulled the ring and tossed the flash-bang device around the corner, towards the commandos.

A bright flare illuminated as Kabira closed his eyes to reduce vision loss; even facing away from the explosion and with his eyes closed, his eyes could still perceive the flash. Not wasting a moment, Kabira and War Sword peeked out from behind cover, rifles in one hand, and opened fire; at these ranges, and from a static, defensible position, they didn't need accuracy, but fire volume.

The attack was a straightforward tactic that tested reactivity rather than thinking. The commandos at the front stopped their fire, reeling from the damage to their optics; their rifle fire had blinded them to what their partners standing behind, waiting to cover for them during reload, had noticed more easily, without having to focus on operating a rifle.

War Sword burst from cover, taking down the commandos in a frontal assault. Those in the back were the first to fall, manual bursts of fire cutting them down, and as the ones in the front tried to recover their vision, War Sword mowed them down with automatic fire. One of the soldiers had even died as he attempted to remove his overloaded night vision goggles.

The sight in front of Kabira, however, was one of despair that they had failed, once again, to make contact with their targets. Slight further down the corridor was a dead commando, and numerous bullet holes riddled the walls and flooring. As Kabira approached, he made out more details; several of those bullet holes near the commando could only have been made by large-calibre pistol cartridges.

War Sword hurried further down, where they chanced upon a blast door. As War Sword 4 walked forwards to examine the interface, which was locked, Kabira caught sight of a dead commando hiding in an air ventilation shaft, his blood still trickling down. The area was surprisingly clean, with a single bullet hole in the wall. Given the lack of a blood trail into whatever room was behind those blast doors, Kabira guessed that the defenders had been successful in whatever path of action they took.

A new transmission cut into Kabira's thoughts. "Crimson Knife to War Sword, there's a large group of commandos breaking off from us and moving to your level and position. There's at least ten of them!"

Kabira motioned for the others to follow him, as they retraced their steps and ducked into another corridor. As the three men waited, listening to footsteps echoing from the path they had just vacated, Kabira tapped War Sword 4's shoulder. "Well?"

"It's a bomb shelter," War Sword 4 whispered. "Even with explosives, they aren't going to crack that door anytime soon without a large amount of it. Not unless they bring in mobile suits."

"Will they be that prepared?" Kabira mused. "Either way, they've got a lot of them around just for the people living in this mansion. We can't afford to lose here."

Kabira waited as the commandos moved back where they came from, and after a while, War Sword followed. It didn't take long before Kabira's comm crackled. "This is Red Fang to War Sword. We're being engaged on multiple fronts along with Blood Lance and Crimson Knife; they're fighting retreating battles rather than engaging us directly. Seems like they moving back out."

Kabira glanced at War Sword 4, who simply spat out a swear word. "Roger that. War Sword to all forces, do not let them back out of the mansion. I repeat, do not let them back out of the mansion."

**CE 73 October 21****st****, 2****nd**** Armoured Division Base, Underground Hangar Complex R-9, Orb Union, Onogoro Island**

**05 54**

Commander Kousaka Kae, squadron commander of the Orb Recon Brigade's 4th Armoured Contingent, tapped her left foot impatiently as the old man in front of her sweated volumes at trying to explain the situation to her.

"What do you mean, Tanumura has us blocked?!" Kae exclaimed, spitting out the surname of one of the noble houses the way she would spit out something disgusting from her mouth. "I'm not even asking for mobile suits! I just want to reinforce our men out on the field!"

"Well, you know how it is, Commander Kousaka," the man replied, the sweat on his face clearly visible in the harsh hangar lighting. His features were twisted into a frown that clearly showed his position; one that could be best described as being in-between an anvil and a hammer. "Now that we're so close to signing the treaty, the Seirans want us to keep a tight leash on all our forces to prevent them from engaging in any actions that might… well, cause misunderstanding."

"Misunderstanding, my ass," Kae hissed, pointing at the fifty or so men of the Orb Recon Brigade behind her, waiting with equipment and personal weapons ready. "I had to pull countless strings just to get their commanders to rescind their deployment orders!"

She was about to order her men to head for their transports when another person showed up, shoving the old man aside.

"Kae. Supremely bad manners aside, I do not remember giving you permission to move your forces."

Tanamura Ichijou folded his arms, further adding to his imposing stature as he locked stares with the smaller Kae. "The Orb Recon Brigade is not your personal playtoy."

"Neither is it yours to command." Kae replied, trying to ignore his offending tone.

"It is not," Ichijou replied. "But you would do well to remember that as the upcoming assistant chief representative of Orb, he will be sharing command of all of Orb's forces."

Kousaka folded her arms. "Only once he marries. Until then, Representative Cagalli Yula Atha is my supreme commander, and she's long given the civilian parliament and us the permission to move our forces in her name, if the need arises."

"Not anymore," Ichijou replied, holding up a document. "Due to ceremonial duties, for the remaining term of Cagalli Yula Atha's service, all duties will be handled by Yuna Roma Seiran."

Kae's eyes widened for a moment, before she shot Ichijou a piercing glare. "Bastard!" she snarled. "Politics and laws aren't pieces of paper for you to rewrite at will! They're the shield of the people, the trust they place in us soldiers to watch their everyday lives and make sure that their days are peaceful!"

"They're necessary to stop people like you, Kae," Ichijou smirked. "Now, will you defy the orders from the council itself?"

"I think I will, Tanamura." Kae growled. "You filthy Seiran lapdog." Turning to the troops, she issued her orders. "Prepare to move out!"

Tanamura shrugged his shoulders and laughed. "Oh, come on."

Kae stiffened as security forces entered the hangar, quickly taking up position. While the fifty-odd soldiers had been given their ammunition, they had yet to load their guns, as was the norm before troops entered the battlezone; all they could do was to cease their movement, watching the security troops with wary eyes.

Kae glowered at Ichijou as a security trooper took up position to her side, rifle at the ready. "You wouldn't," she said, glowering at the minor noble.

"Like I said," Ichijou shrugged. "Those are council orders." He leaned closer, almost face-to-face with Kae. "You should be prepared to choose a new master, Kae. No sense sticking with a sinking ship."

**CE 73 October 21****st****, Unspecified location in the Orb Union**

**06 17**

Kabira grunted in disgust as he ran; alongside him, his men raced through the trees, moving to catch up with the commandos they had to let past. He had lost two more men from Fireteams Crimson Knife and Blood Lance in trying to stop them from leaving the mansion complex, and they had been harried all along the way.

Now, with the commandos leaving, Kabira could lead his men against them again. For all the good he was doing, however, he might as well have called it quits and left the area.

"Shit!" Red Fang 2 said. "No reinforcements, and the enemy's possibly got mobile suits. The odds couldn't have been worse."

Kabira gave the signal to move to cover, seconds before gunfire scythed through the trees. Behind him, Kabira heard a scream as someone was shot, tumbling to the ground in a spray of mud and detritus.

Kabira braced against a tree, occasionally exposing himself to open fire. "Shit!" one of the soldiers beside him muttered. "We went through all that just to get a locked door, and now we're being cut off from our secondary targets!"

"We delayed them long enough for the primary objectives to escape," Kabira replied. "That counts for so-"

"War Sword Leader!" Crimson Knife 4 exclaimed. "Look at the coast!"

As the commandos closed in, another one of Kabira's men fell; even as Kabira fired back, he spotted something rising out of the coastal waters.

Or rather, a group of things.

Kabira buckled as fire lanced through his left shoulder; someone had gotten lucky with that shot. He returned fire on semi-automatic, spraying bullets into the bushes, and was rewarded with a scream of pain.

"There aren't that many of them left!" Kabira shouted; judging from the sounds of fire and movement through the foliage, he estimated that this was a delaying action by not more than five commandos. "Take them down with precise shots!"

ZAFT commandos had a reputation for being some of the toughest soldiers in the Earth Sphere, and were rumoured to take drugs to enhance their already-stellar combat performance. However, Kabira and his men were similarly-trained Special Forces as well, having been hardened by their training, followed by the past war and several live-firing exercises afterwards, where they had fought against both the elements and their fellow teammate to achieve their objectives over the span of weeks. They were close, if not equal, and right now Kabira and his small team of men had the numerical advantage.

As the last of the commandos fell, Kabira pulled off his night-vision equipment to get a clearer view. The amphibious mobile suits moving onto the shores, whatever model they were supposed to be, had begun their assault on the mansion, and were doing a splendid job of slagging even its foundations.

"What the hell are we supposed to do against that?!" Blood Lance 3 exclaimed.

"We can't," Kabira said. "This is the end of our responsibilities. Without reinforcements, and with no mobile suit support sent…"

The soldiers watched as the enemy's mobile suits continued their grisly work for the next five minutes. The mobile suits were heaping volumes of beam and missile fire upon the mansion; Kabira was surprised that they hadn't brought a strategic-level explosive with them to turn the land around into a gigantic crater.

Then, a single beam lanced into the night sky, followed by an explosion in the hills behind the mansion.

Emerging out of the dust cloud was a mobile suit, its wings spread as it shot into the sky. It was one that Kabira instantly recognized. Its visage was world-famous; Kabira, who had the chance to witness it up close during his tenure on the _Izumo-_class warship_ Kusanagi_ in the previous war, it had left a deep impression on him.

"That…!" one of the soldiers exclaimed.

Kabira merely managed a tired smile, as the Freedom GUNDAM swooped down and began demolishing the enemy's own mobile suits, lighting the shores up with fires and plasma beams. "Looks like we managed to buy them enough time for that, at least."

**CE 73 October 21****st****, Chairman's Office, Aprilius One, PLANT, Lagrange Point 5**

**08 37**

Gilbert Durandal pinched the bridge of his nose as he read the report handed to him. Failure was an expectation that needed to be present for every action, no matter the chances of success; yet he could scarcely believe how bad the mission results were.

Nevertheless, his plan needed to continue. It would be for the betterment of the PLANTs… no, the entire Earth Sphere, were his objective to be achieved.

One or two more people opposed to the plan would not make much of a difference in the long run.

**Afterword:**_I initially intended for this to be a short one, but it dragged on for quite a while once I opened up inter-Orb political rivalries. Given how their nobility system is a basic reference to the history of the real-life Japanese shogunate, I thought that it would only be appropriate; after all, for the Seirans to gain that much power, they had to have a significant number of supporters._

_Counting six more to the end._


	29. Chapter 29: Peasant Army

_**Author's Note:**_

_This fanfic is to write upon some of the events in Gundam SEED and SEED Destiny that are not touched upon or mentioned in-series, but their dates are listed on GundamWikia and are thus treated as part of canon. They are therefore based upon actual happenings in the Cosmic Era universe, but the events within them are open to interpretation. This fanfic is also an attempt at showcasing a "what-if" of all sides involved in the wars, and how some of the events within the show might have come to be._

_Because there are no set dates within the SEED Destiny series, the dates here are displayed only for approximation of the events' chronological placing to the end of the Second Bloody Valentine War, and are not indicative of the exact timeframes of any events that occur in SEED Destiny._

**Gundam SEED: Tales of the Cosmic Era**

**Chapter 29: Peasant Army**

**CE 73 October 27****th****, City of Van, Van District, Eurasian Federation**

**11 22**

Zekiye Ateş ducked behind a wall as 12.7mm gunfire gouged chunks out of old brick structures. All around her, the city of Van was the same hellscape that was currently spreading throughout most of the countries in the European region.

Behind that wall, OMNI mobile suits marched down the ruined streets of the city, their weapons spitting fiery death upon those who dared to openly oppose them.

It had all started several weeks ago, right after the fallout of the event that was now being termed the "Junius 7 Incident"; when terrorists had brought the carcass of the former space colony down upon the earth. ZAFT forces had endeavoured to destroy the carcass in the atmosphere, but their efforts had been hindered, and fragments had rained their judgment upon the land.

The European region was one of the more harder-hit regions; Turkey, especially, had borne the brunt of three fragments, all on major cities. Van had thankfully not been one of them.

In the chaos of the recovery efforts that followed, the government of Turkey had directed most of their armed forces towards the rescue of those displaced by the disaster. Barely a few days later, however, OMNI forces had swept in; what had been expectation for an international relief effort turned to confusion and horror as the OMNI forces, a large portion being from the Atlantic Federation, had instead pulled the local forces into forming a defensive line over the former borders of Turkey.

The given justification of "preparing for a possible ZAFT invasion" was so tepid that the government of Turkey had outright refused their demands. In response, the OMNI forces begun a campaign of subjugation, driving most of the local forces back in a series of lightning campaigns. With the Eurasian Federation's own reserve and national forces stretched thin, there was little they could do to come to the aid of one of their member nations, which was being subjugated in the name of "peacekeeping". Even civilian protests had failed; the Atlantic Federation had shoved the weak aside, and did away with stronger ones, until they got what they want.

Even the freedom fighters gathered in Van had been running from the south-eastern regions of Turkey. The Atlantic Federation had just reached Van a day ago, and had not wasted any time in putting the people of the city in its place.

From what Zekiye had heard, the other Southern European nations weren't faring much better. She grinded her teeth in frustration as the destruction continued all dealt by an enemy whose homes were halfway around the globe.

Zekiye pulled herself out from her own musings as another man slid into cover beside her, a portable rocket launcher set cradled in his arms. "Damned Atlantic dogs," he hissed. "If only we had the support of the local forces!"

"We can't count on them too much," Zekiye said, helping the man to set up the weapon. "From what I've heard, they've been beaten back all the way beyond the lake of Van."

"They're probably going to stop if they fail to hold Tatvan," the man said.

"They can't let the Atlantic Federation do this to us!" Zekiye exclaimed. "This is _our_ nation!"

"I know," the man replied. "Why is why…" he grunted as he slid the last piece into the launcher assembly. "… we're here, doing this!"

The man set his eyes on the launcher's sighting equipment, watching, waiting for the mobile suit to cross their position. Their hiding place had shielded them from both the mobile suit's heat sensors, and their relative lack of movement had further hidden their location.

The ground rumbled, and the road cracked as the mobile suit, a Dagger L, came into view. Leaning against the wall, Zekiye gulped as she watched the mobile suit stomp past.

"Got you, bastard", the man said, as he depressed the launcher's trigger. Smoke billowed out behind the two of them as the rear of the launcher lighted up for a second – then the armour-piercing rocket shot out, and straight into the thruster backpack of the Dagger L. The mobile suit froze, fire streaming out from its body, before toppling over.

"We got him!" Zekiye said.

"Alright, now to change locations." The man said.

Both of them hadn't even gotten to disassembling the launcher, when a huge pressure wave knocked Zekiye to the ground. The immense heat washed over her like a tidal wave, sucking away the air in the area. As the pressure wave gradually let up, Zekiye started gasping for air, not caring that she was breathing in copious amounts of dust from lying face-down in the streets.

The back of her neck felt raw to the touch, and after brushing over it, Zekiye's hands came away slightly sticky. Her mind barely registered the burn on her neck, and the liquid that came away at the touch to be blood plasma. The pain was dull, and her arms moved sluggishly to take off the sweater that she wore, barely registering the smouldering patches on the soot-covered clothing.

Another part of her mind screamed that there must have been a second mobile suit behind the first, and which had fired upon their position due to its teammate's destruction; judging by the heat, it had been a beam weapon. Her survival was nothing less than pure luck.

Then, as though someone flipped a second switch, she collapsed back onto the ground, the light in her mind fading as fast as a candle flame in the wind.

**CE 73 October 28****th****, City of Van, Van District, Eurasian Federation**

**06 31**

Zekiye woke up to the immense throbbing pain on the back of her neck. Out of reflex, she clapped her right hand over it, only to barely avoid a shrill cry, gasping in pain as she finally remembered her last moments before blacking out.

Stumbling to her feet, she tottered over to where she had remembered the other man to be, judging by his relative distance from the wall. Nothing remained there; at least, nothing that she could make out from all the scattered debris. Not under the dim morning light.

Unlike the Van in her recent memory, the Van of today was nearly silent. Her watch, which still worked, had only shown one night's passing; given what she saw, however, it was as though everyone had packed up and left over the course of a few weeks. All that remained were half-slagged buildings and the occasional corpse. She even chanced upon one or two disabled mobile suits. If any humans remained, then she didn't encounter any on her single-track journey through the city. From far off, rumbling sounds could be heard; she had climbed to the highest building she had encountered on her walk, and saw the Atlantic Federation forces preparing to move off. At least, they were no longer moving into the city.

For the rest of the day, Zekiye walked around town, first to find something to alleviate her pain, and next to ease her stomach's demands. The Atlantic Federation decision to just march into the town, declaring it "a hotbed of terrorism", had forced most people to flee for their lives; those shops that were still untouched still boasted their wares on their shelves, and a lucky few even had working refrigeration.

With the mood she was in, however, Zekiye's mind had numbed itself to everything but the fact that her life was essentially ruined by another nation's heavy-handed actions. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner were as tasteless as dust; throughout the day, Zekiye's feet brought her across the city, towards the city outskirts, overlooking the shores of Lake Van.

The water glistened in the light of dusk as she sat down, cradling her legs close to her. The small backpack she had picked up along the way, with several items collected throughout the day filling it out, was dumped unceremoniously onto the ground. Now that she had time to think, it has been a hectic two days. Her life had literally gone from university student to freedom fighter in that timespan.

Now, she was a refugee in her own country.

The light of dusk fast fading into the darkness of night, Zekiye moved towards one of the more intact buildings.

Stumbling into the abandoned apartment, Zekiye found a sofa placed against a wall. Bullet holes had perforated the walls around her, and the only TV in the room was inoperable.

Settling her body onto the tattered sofa, she let her muscles relax, and her mind slowly drifted into the darkness. Come tomorrow, she was going to have to think of something to continue on from here. But for now, at least the fighting had stopped.

A sudden clattering sound brought her sharply back to reality, her hand reaching for the salvaged pistol she had picked up during the day. While she had her chance to practice right before the Atlantic Federation forces had arrived, her mind barely registered the steps needed to properly hold a pistol.

Assembling a rocket launcher to take down a faceless machine was a lot easier than knowing that she was going to shoot a live person within the next few seconds.

A small voice appeared within her consciousness. _That is, if you even survive to pull the trigger._

The kitchen of the apartment was directly connected to the living room, and it was from there that the sounds originated. The clattering had died down, and in its place was a series of heavy shuffling sounds. Zekiye tightened her grip on the pistol, unaware that the sensation on her index finger was not the trigger, but the trigger guard.

Images of OMNI commandoes began to flash through Zekiye's mind, each one building up her fear until she was sure she would stop breathing. Then the shuffling stopped, and an OMNI mobile suit pilot came into view. He drew a haggard breath, and toppled onto the floor.

For a while, nothing moved. It took several minutes for Zekiye to muster up enough courage to move in closer to take a look; in the day, and with the townspeople-turned-freedom fighters around her, she feared little, but her day trip had taught her that it was the people who made a city. The fast-approaching darkness of the impending night only served to reinforce that notion.

The pilot's breathing was short and ragged, with each breath out of his nose stirring up the dust on the floor. Zekiye reached out to touch his face, and was startled to find that it came away sticky and smelling of iron; whatever he had gone though, it hadn't been easy.

Zekiye wheezed, her fatigued body and mind trying to fire up her muscles from their relaxed state, as she dragged the comatose OMNI pilot into a more comfortable position; she had only been a freedom fighter for two days, and her mindset was still fixed towards the mobile suits, rather than registering the fact that it was the human within that did all the work. Rummaging through her backpack, she managed to fish out a roll of bandage. She dressed his wounds as best as she could, a miniature torchlight clenched in-between her teeth as she worked.

Once done, the man's head resembled that of a mummy, although his injuries had not been that serious. Nevertheless, Zekiye, confident that it would hold, left the man in a corner of the room. She was almost asleep before she got up with a start again; fishing out a roll of cable tie from her backpack, she made sure to tie the pilot's hands together, and managed to relieve the man of a concealed pistol at the same time. She might have been a former arts student with nothing to do with a war, but she wasn't ignorant of common sense. There was no telling the mindset of that pilot, and Zekiye had heard enough horror stories of OMNI during the previous war to make her shiver.

Lying back down on the sofa, Zekiye felt her mind slipping. Her entire body hurt; she was tired, slightly thirsty and hungry, and she hadn't had a bath for the past three days. But the one feeling that stood out the most, and the one that remained in her fading memory as sleep quickly caught up with her, was an aching emotion, one that longed to wind back time to where she could spend her days exploring her lifelong hobby alongside her friends again.

**CE 73 October 29****th****, City of Van, Van District, Turkey, Eurasian Federation**

**06 54**

The next morning brought pain to Zekiye's head, the throbbing feeling overpowering all other sensations as she struggled to separate herself from the sofa. She turned to look at where she had left the captive last night.

The pilot's breathing was laboured, the sound of his exhalation carrying clearly through the early morning air. The pilot was clearly a local from the Atlantic Federation; his western complexion showed that the redness of his face was not a normal sign.

Wrenching herself free from the morning mentality, she scrambled towards her captive, the heat from his forehead a clear indication of his status, even through the bandages. Now, with the light of day to guide her, she noticed that his pilot suit was unzipped, and that red, angry-looking burn marks were also present on his chest and shoulders.

Dragging the man over to the sofa, she laid him down, and rummaged through her bag. The only thing she found that could possibly be used was a piece of cloth. Thankfully, the taps in the apartment still worked, and she removed the dressings on the man's face, replacing it with the wet cloth, now in three strips laid across his forehead, his face and the bridge of his nose, and covering his lower neck. It was far too late for it to have any major effect, but Zekiye reasoned that it would be far better than leaving his face bound in blood-stained bandages.

As she left the apartment, backpack in hand, she wondered what was to become of her. The day brought more fruitless wandering, although she had to admit that she was covering very little of the city of Van itself; it was quite likely that she had simply been the only one who had yet to move to another sector, where the refugees left behind had mostly gathered.

The day brought little other than more supplies, including gel packs from a nearby shop that promised quick burn relief. Slapping one on the back of her neck to replace its previous dressing, she returned to the apartment. The first thing that came to mind as she entered the room was that the sofa was empty.

Whether by luck or by one of her sense picking up something, Zekiye couldn't tell, but she ducked as a vase swung out from behind the open apartment door, narrowly missing her head. The hands grasping the rim of the vase slipped, and the heavy ornament flew out of the building, hitting the asphalt road behind her with an echoing shatter.

The pilot, his hands still tied, but now in front of him, came into view, his feet unstable from the missed blow. Not one to miss a chance, Zekiye tackled the man, and the two went down with an impact that shook the wooden flooring.

"Kuh… you…" the man choked out.

Zekiye's hands moved by instinct, tightening around her opponent's neck quickly. Her face was twisted into an expression of anger, but no words went past her clenched teeth.

A sharp blow to her spine sent Zekiye tumbling forward and face-first into the floor, as the man brought up one knee in a quick blow. Turning around, he scrambled towards Zekiye, intending to take the upper hand, and was rewarded with a blow across the face when she struck out with a brick piece.

As the man gasped, Zekiye hefted the rock, and was about to bring it down upon her opponent's head when she realized that he was in a delirious state. If it were possible, his face was even more flushed than before, and his lips were cracked; a clear sign of impending dehydration.

Something in Zekiye's mind clicked, as she realized that the man had been left alone for hours without water, and more importantly, with his uncovered areas being blocked by wet cloth, preventing him from sweating.

**CE 73 October 30****th****, City of Van, Van District, Turkey, Eurasian Federation**

**19 54**

The man awoke, the beat in his head slowly receding. His eyes danced as they attempted to find a foothold in the darkened room, stopping on the battery lamp situated some distance away from him. Bathed in a dim light was the woman who had knocked him out, easting something from an opened can.

Seeing that the pilot had awakened, Zekiye slid a packet of bread towards him. "Eat up," she said, in English. "Although, it is your choice whether you want to starve or not."

Eyeing Zekiye, the pilot cautiously took the wrapping and tore it open, taking care that his hands, which were still tied, had a firm grip on the custard bun within. He had his pride, but the calling from his stomach was the far greater demand of the two. "I tried to kill you, you know."

To his mild surprise, the woman snorted. "Don't start any philosophical shit with me now." She polished off the remains of her meal, setting the can aside. "I spent the entire afternoon forcing you to down bottle after bottle of water. I won't have someone dying on my watch."

With his mind clearer, the pilot realized that he no longer felt thirsty, nor was his fever as mentally blinding as before. "You're not an insurgent, are you?"

Zekiye tossed him hear meanest glare. "You mean freedom fighter, you dirty invader," she said. "You Atlantic dogs and your mobile suits are the source of everything."

"We wouldn't even need to be here if you guys weren't letting ZAFT in unconditionally," the pilot heatedly replied.

"Letting ZAFT in?" Zekiye said, her voice rising. "We were being busy dealing with our own troubles! Turkey got three fragments from Junius 7 in its side!"

"Yeah?" the pilot retorted. "You guys just pulled your border forces back into the nation! That's an open invitation for ZAFT forces in the Middle East! Heck, if you guys had stayed at the border, we might have been able to call on your forces for Gulnahan!"

"The Eurasian Federation is trying to pick up the pieces by itself," Zekiye said. "You think we can spare time trying to prepare for war?"

"Yeah?" the pilot replied. "Well then, why were you guys so eager to go at us when we arrived at your country to bolster your forces?"

"You were pulling valuable manpower away from the disaster sites!" Zekiye countered.

"What, local forces weren't enough? Is that how inefficient your civil services are?" the pilot sneered.

"In a disaster, the faster we move, with as much manpower as possible, the more lives can be saved," Zekiye hissed. "Thanks to you, we've suffered completely unneeded casualties."

"And ZAFT invading you guys will be alright? Get your head out of the gutter," the pilot said. "And you're even impeding us with this whole insurgency!"

"No, you get your head out the gutter," Zekiye said. "You're the ones who first set up base in Gulnahan, making ZAFT worry about an invasion from the Middle East, and now you're here for peacekeeping when it's just a display of brutality to force the Eurasian Federation to submit to your demands." Zekiye shut off the lamp, and pulled the ragged blanket over her body. "You're just as deluded as I thought you would be."

Finishing off his first meal in two days, the pilot looked around, trying to get his bearings in the darkened room. "Wait. What about-"

"There's a pot behind you," Zekiye said. "Good night."

The pilot digested Zekiye's last remarks, before flopping down onto the wooden floor resignedly.

**CE 73 October 31****st****, City of Van, Van District, Turkey, Eurasian Federation**

**09 23**

Morning brought a surprise to Zekiye.

"Um, sorry." The pilot had said. "For what I've said last night. The name's Callad Torris. Just call me Cal."

And now, halfway through the morning, she was letting her de facto captive tag along with her as she went around on his directions, trying to set her little escape plan in motion. "So you're not from America, then?" Zekiye asked, trying to keep awkward science from settling in-between them.

"Not from the place once known as the USA, no," Cal replied. "I'm from the Canadian region- ah, here we are." He moved towards the wreck of a mobile suit; a wreck that, Zekiye noted, was where she had downed one of the blasted things with her partner three days ago. Now that it was in the day, she could clearly see a burnt shoe lying on the ground.

"Those battery packs of yours better be a good one," Zekiye said, putting her emotions our of her mind for the moment. "We can't stay here forever. I've already found a usable car yesterday… it just needs a kick-start. Great idea to use a battery pack."

"Right," Cal said, hopping carefully onto the mobile suit, his hands still tied. Sidling into the cockpit, Zekiye waited for a while before a low but audible humming sound filled the air. "Great. Looks like one of the power cells is untouched. Opening the hatch now."

There was a slight hissing sound as one of the undamaged compartments in the front of the mobile suit's torso opened, and a battery pack slid out. The block was slightly larger than a car battery unit, and as Zekiye moved out to retrieve it, Cal called out to her. "Can you come into the cockpit? I have something to show you."

Zekiye moved towards what she assumed was the cockpit, and that was when she heard a voice she had been all too familiar with. It was the voice of the current prime minister of the region of Turkey, and he was speaking as though to a single person.

She saw Cal, sitting in the cockpit, his face illuminated by the screen. "What…" she said, trying to articulate the words. "What is the meaning of this?"

"I think I probably spoke too much last night," Cal said, his tone unreadable. "I'm not completely ignorant of what my own country has been capable of." He fixed a stare at Zekiye. "But I'm not a liar. Two days after the Junius 7 Incident, the Turkish government offered, under the table, to secede from the Eurasian Federation in order to set up a ZAFT-aligned nation-state in this region." He paused, leaving Zekiye to slowly step back. "We were sent here in response to this situation."

Zekiye paused, her mind trying to comprehend the words being played out as a record. "You… this is a trick, right? Some voice synthesis software…"

Cal looked away. "From your viewpoint, maybe. But I wouldn't lie about this." He got of the pilot seat, hobbling out of the fallen mobile suit. "We were deployed here so fast we needed to have our briefing on the way, in our mobile suits."

"But…" Zekiye stammered. "Why… at this moment…"

"I'm not privy to the minds of politicians," Cal said, "But setting up a ZAFT aligned-state… not bad, right? Especially when OMNI has proven less than satisfactory at coming to your aid during a disaster…"

"Then… we… were…" Zekiye said, trying to force the words out. "… in the… wrong?"

Cal's only response was a sad look. "From the looks of what has been going onto the official channels, you guys probably don't know any of this." He moved towards the battery pack. "I don't blame you guys. It's true that the Atlantic Federation has been very heavy-handed here, and that I've seen some of my comrades commit atrocities." He nudged the battery pack. "It's also because the Eurasian Federation was ready to cut you guys loose as a final option against ZAFT invasion. They have no way to retaliate, and no means to hold the land. Not until they clear up the aftermaths of the Junius 7 Incident, at any rate."

"I... no…" Zekiye said, hold up a hand to grip the side of her head in confusion. "Then what's going on? How about the war effort? What about the supposed ZAFT invasion?"

"When I first arrived here, the ZAFT forces had already reached through Georgia and Armenia. Not only did their nations not defend themselves, they also allowed ZAFT forces to pass through." Cal picked up the battery pack by its handle. "ZAFT already has a base in the Black Sea. If Turkey is completely given up, then the Eurasian Federation will likely redraw its frontlines in Ukraine and Bulgaria."

"Then… the reason why the national forces haven't arrived…"

"I can't say for sure." Cal said. "Not defending themselves would be suspicious, but if the current prime minister is no longer in control, then the remaining forces would be led by those allied with the Eurasian Federation, either seeking reinforcements from Europe or looking to escape the Atlantic Federation's witch hunt."

Zekiye knelt into the ground. "Then… just what have the freedom fighters… what have I been fighting for? There's no point in defending my home if… if… if it's been… given… away…"

Cal simply remained silent.

**CE 73 November 1****st****, outskirts of Diyabakir, Diyabakir Province, Turkey, Eurasian Federation**

**11 23**

The city of Diyabakir was still occupied, cars were moving towards it, although far less than Zekiye had though. To Zekiye, it seemed that the fighting had missed the region completely.

The car stopped as Zekiye released the pedal. "… Is this far enough, then?"

Cal, dressed in casual clothes picked off the streets, managed a sad smile. "Yeah. Sure. Thanks for everything."

"…Is this what you really want?" Zekiye asked. "T… this is desertion, right?"

"I know." Cal said. "But… after realizing that you could have killed me anytime you wanted…" he eyed the two pistols in the backpack, placed in the rear seats, "… and when walking around town, I realized that this isn't the way to do things."

"Still…" Zekiye began.

"And… well, I was sent here to quell insurgents, but a couple of my friends have been sent deeper into the Middle Eastern region." Cal paused. "I… I heard that they were sent there to enforce order over people who were drafted to construct bases for the OMNI forces garrisoned in the region. The stories weren't good at all; we talked about Gulnahan, remember? That place's particularly vicious."

"… So are you just going to walk all over Europe?" Zekiye asked.

"Maybe. I could turn up at an OMNI garrison and claim to have been stranded during combat. If they do retrieve my unit, I've arranged it so that my unit's black box was "damaged" during the fight." Cal sniggered. "It's easy for an engineering graduate to do stuff like that."

Cal's countenance softened. "Or I could also pretend to be a refugee. I can pretend to be a stranded tourist. Besides, my IFF was really damaged, and I was unconscious for a good while after that. My teammates probably left me for dead. It had been a pretty good hit after all."

Zekiye managed to suppress the urge to grin as she let Cal out. Flipping out a pocket knife, she waited for him to reach her side of the car, where she cut off his restraints.

Zekiye made ready to drive off, when Cal reached inwards to touch her shoulder; she could still see where the cable tie had dug into his hands for the past two days. "What are you going to do yourself?"

"I don't know," Zekiye said. "But I think I've had enough of putting my life on the line. Maybe be a wandering painter."

"I see," Cal said. "Alright then. Goodbye."

"Mm," Zekiye replied. "Stay safe."

Cal watched as the car drove off. He almost lost his life, but it was time to get back to his original mission. Far from being under Blue Cosmos influence, this place was actually a ZAFT-aligned zone. It wasn't going to be of much help against the Blue Cosmos agents back home…

… but the leader of Cal's actions, Lieutenant-Colonel March Cornerstone, of the Atlantic Federation's Bureau of Intelligence, would be pleased to know that he could now concentrate wholly on the home front, in the lands of the Atlantic Federation.

That Blue Cosmos had no hold in this region. That the best they could do was to delude their soldiers into fighting for a fake cause.

Cal licked his lips. "Time to turn the tables on them."

**Afterword:**_This one is in answer to the scenes showed in SEED Destiny's episodes concerning the Lohengrin Gate Battle. While I'm definitely not going to whitewash the Earth Alliance's abuse of human rights, I only felt that it was fair to balance the portrayal of the suggested fragmenting of the Eurasian Federation; that is, one or more reasons how Earth Alliance troops managed to put up such a crappy display of abuse._

_As is keeping with the tone of previous stories, I've also separated the forces into their various component factions (Eurasian, Atlantic, etc.) rather than just lumping them together as "Earth Alliance". I felt that it would allow me to keep to the established plot in SEED Destiny, without retconning anything, and yet still add depth to the internal conflicts within OMNI._


	30. Chapter 30: Crime Without Equal

_**Author's Note:**_

_This fanfic is to write upon some of the events in Gundam SEED and SEED Destiny that are not touched upon or mentioned in-series, but their dates are listed on GundamWikia and are thus treated as part of canon. They are therefore based upon actual happenings in the Cosmic Era universe, but the events within them are open to interpretation. This fanfic is also an attempt at showcasing a "what-if" of all sides involved in the wars, and how some of the events within the show might have come to be._

_Because there are no set dates within the SEED Destiny series, the dates here are displayed only for approximation of the events' chronological placing to the end of the Second Bloody Valentine War, and are not indicative of the exact timeframes of any events that occur in SEED Destiny._

**Gundam SEED: Tales of the Cosmic Era**

**Chapter 30: Crime Without Equal**

**CE 73 January 3****rd****, Marzahn, Berlin, Germany, Eurasian Federation**

**10 06**

Blood-stained slush pooled around the sides of the roads.

The screams carried through the cold air, like a never-ceasing siren of suffering.

The anguished cries of the wounded and dying, from soldiers and civilians alike.

In the past two months, the upheaval throughout the Eurasian Federation had seen them lose most of their southern Eurasian territory to the advancing ZAFT forces. Compared to the ferocity of the skirmishes in space, clashes on land had been few and far between; the Eurasian Federation, which had been in a position to face the bulk of ZAFT terrestrial forces in combat, had opted to retreat from the eastern front rather than hunker down for the possibility of a long and extended battle, the decision having come from public pressure to avoid a defensive winter war. They had left behind nations without a defence force, and ZAFT, taking advantage of the tactical retreats, had opted to fill those gaps, earning the respect of the civilians in those countries.

In December, the Eurasian Federation had finally broken off their pact with the Atlantic Federation, and had signed an armistice with the PLANTs. For everyone assigned to the European front, it meant that the battles in Eurasia had ceased, and that ZAFT could return to their original boundaries instead of trying to keep the pressure on OMNI, in order to prevent them from mounting a counterattack against their Middle Eastern holdings.

Now, however, it seemed to Lily Aressa that ZAFT had bitten off more than they could chew. Or swallow, for that matter. As the gigantic mobile armour in the middle of Berlin fired its weapons once again, Lily went prone on the floor, her body over another person's, shielded by the medical Connected Armored Vehicle that had ferried her to this place.

"Corporal!" the CAV driver shouted from his seat. "Are you still there?!"

Lily coughed, one hand pushing her helmet up, trying to regain her breath from the stifling pressure wave that had washed over here; the cold air and snow that touched her exposed skin provided a stark relief to the ambient heat of large-calibre energy weapons. Overhead, several flaming DINNs dropped from the sky, and the far-off sounds of explosions told her that there were even more mobile suits and vehicles being destroyed. "Y-yeah, I'm fine! More importantly, this is the last casualty!"

One of the other medics, a burly man by the name of Nick Garond, reached out to help Lily pull the wounded man inside. His other hand held a saline pack high, the tube snaking down towards another patient's arms, a ZAFT infantryman who had been injured while rescuing a civilian in this area. "We're in! Get going!"

The CAV roared as Lily slammed the heavy rear doors shut, and the remodelled ZAFT CAV, with a Red Cross painted on both of its sides, and a larger, unarmed rear cabin affixed to it, rumbled off with a three-point-turn, facing away from the rampaging monster in the center of the city.

ZAFT had sortied as a precaution, and had initially held position well outside of the battlezone, when a call for help had come from, of all places, the Eurasian Federation. Lily didn't know of all the details, but apparently they had something else holding them back. And indeed, she had yet to witness a single OMNI or Eurasian Federation mobile suit alongside the ZAFT forces, in the fight that had since erupted against the Destroy and the forces it brought with it.

Lily swept her glance around the injured in the CAV. There was a BuCUE pilot who had to be pulled from his wreck; a spinal injury was suspected, and highly likely. There were five civilians with shrapnel wounds and plasma burns; one of them was already too late, and Nick had given that civilian a dose of morphine to quieten her down. There was the aforementioned ZAFT infantryman, whom they relieved from his anti-armour fireteam, and the civilian he had protected.

Even as the CAV sped towards the outskirts of the city, to further out where emergency triage centres had been set up, the black mobile armour fired again, green plasma beams lancing out to raze more of the city to the ground. Even through the armour of the CAV, Lily could hear the various explosions going off in the distance.

"What a monster…" Lily said. "… our forces aren't even scratching it!"

"I can't even begin to imagine the casualties myself," Nick replied. "But the more important thing is, ZAFT can't go at it all day. If we take too many losses, we'd be in the red ourselves. Some forces present on the European front are OMNI from the Atlantic Federation, and not the Eurasian Federation."

"But they won't be able to push through that easily, right?" Lily said. "We still have our main forces in reserve…"

A roaring overtook the APC as the Destroy fired all of its weapons again. Lily clenched her teeth until the shaking stopped; thankfully, the CAV was well on its way out of the immediate city areas.

The CAV's vehicle commander slammed his fist on a nearby panel. "Shit, we just lost the command ship!"

"From that far away!?" Nick exclaimed. "Just what kind of…"

"The chain of command on the field is pretty much gone now…" the commander said. "Apart from the _Roksova_ at the tertiary line, we don't have any land battleships left!"

"W… what about our forces!?" Lily asked.

The tone of defeat was evident even in the vehicle commander's voice. "40% total losses, 60% WIA. At this rate, we're going to be annihilated…!"

Whatever Lily wanted to say was lost in her throat, as the front of the vehicle vanished in a piercing green light that shone through even the small viewports of the rear cabin. The next moment, her own scream was lost in the cacophony of carnage that followed, as the CAV, minus a third of its front, tumbled, its balance lost. Bracing against the inner frame, Lily clenched her teeth, helpless to do anything, as the occupants in the interior were flung about like rag dolls, limbs and bodies smashing into her.

Moments passed, and every muscle in her body screamed as Lily tried to get up from her prone position. Bodies were scattered all around her; she had been flung out from the inside, and as her vision cleared, she could see the CAV's rear portion, some distance away from her.

Any hope she had at rescuing any survivors was cut short as a wave of green beams blasted overhead, cutting a path through the buildings around her and raining debris upon the scene; one beam swept across the CAV's wreckage, slagging it through the middle. Lily's body lost all strength as the concussive wave of the explosion swept over her again, and she fell back onto the pitted road, her mind numb from all the carnage. She reached for the nearest body, the wounded soldier that they had rescued; his face was bruised, and his eyes open, a glassy, unresponsive stare directed towards nothing.

Lily continued her actions, her mind falling back to her training in the face of such numbing power. Body by body she checked, sweeping the snow away from covered faces, and steering clear of the dismembered corpses, but her search was in vain. There was nothing worth saving.

Stumbling to her feet, she staggered into a side street that was still mostly intact. By now, most of her wits had returned, and she knelt down as tears began to flow, her body shaking in silent sobs as the falling snow gathered on her helmet top and shoulders. She cursed the black behemoth; its power, its total domination of the battle area, and its pilot. She cursed them all, their callousness, their disregard for life, and she swore that if she ever came across someone cruel enough to be the pilot of that monstrosity, she would never lend a hand in saving that person.

Such wanton, blind destruction. Lily and her companions in her medical team had worked their best, from the shores of the Persian Gulf, through Gulnahan, Armenia, Georgia, and now to Berlin, the proverbial doorstep of the core of the Eurasian Federation. They had put their all into saving every life handed to them, and had willingly risked their lives to keep soldiers, pilots, and civilians alive long enough to be sent to the rear for better treatment. They had seen to every ailing person that had come to them, bound by their training, and their personal values that had made them choose a path in the medical sciences in the first place.

All of that effort was nothing compared to what had just happened. Their efforts, their works, their lives, rendered insignificant, cruelly erased under the blinding hate of the black, merciless obelisk, now advancing towards the city centre.

Another multi-phase cannon blast screamed across the skies, and as Lily turned her gaze skywards to watch, it was fired towards the rear lines, where the triage centres would be. Her heart plummeted further; the command land warship, the _Archduke_, had been stationed on the southern fringes of Berlin when the Destroy had practically annihilated it from where it had been a few minutes ago, on the northern edges of the city.

Berlin was slightly over 30 kilometers wide, counting by diameter, and the _Archduke's_ main guns had a range of slightly over fifty kilometres, the equivalent of battleship cannons; in terms of land warfare, its guns had been on the extreme end of long-ranged weapons. If the Destroy's cannons could reach even further…

As the roar of the blast died down, Lily heard a sound that was unlike the scenes around her. Her body moved before her mind caught up, and as she followed the source, her previous burning hatred forgotten, she found a crying young boy, hiding behind an overturned table in an abandoned shop.

With a single glance, she found the problem; the swelling on the boy's ankle had said it all. Pushing her own thoughts to the back, she approached the young child. "Everything's going to be alright now."

The boy stopped crying long enough to get his bearings on her, the thundering of weapons fire painfully audible in the background. "Are you… are you here to help me?"

"Yeah, I… I'm here to help you." Lily swallowed, trying to keep her composure. "I have to remove your left shoe, alright? It's to make it less painful."

The boy choked back his tears and nodded.

"It's okay," Lily said, easing her fingers across the shoelaces. Lily could tell from the swelling that the sprain hadn't been recent, and it was clear that the boy didn't know that removing his shoe would have been the first, and most important step, before the swelling got out of hand. She fished a painkiller out from her pouch, and handed it to the boy with her water canteen. "I can't make it smaller for you. I'm sorry."

The boy nodded, wiping his sleeve across his tear-streaked face. He chewed on the pill, trying his best not to blanch at the artificial taste, and quickly washed down the aftertaste with copious amounts of water.

Lily searched around the shop, finally obtaining a small towel from a drawer. Stepping back out under the snowing sky, she scooped as much ice and slush as she could gather, and returned to where the boy was now waiting. While she could no longer see the Destroy, the blasts emitted by the monstrosity were still visible; they were directed skywards, however, and Lily could see the thruster light of aerial mobile suits in the skies, dancing around the black creature.

Thankfully, there were no open wounds on the boy's ankle. "I'm going to take off your shoe now," Lily said, securing his leg with her left hand. "It might hurt just a little bit more, okay?"

The boy nodded, and shut his eyes. Lily counted to three, and as quickly as she could, readjusted her grip firmly on the boy's leg, just above his angle, and dislodged the back of his shoe. The boy gasped in pain, but kept his silence for the rest of it, as Lily easily pulled the shoe off. "You're a brave kid. Well done."

The boy was silent; tears of pain were still flowing, but he was no longer crying, as Lily tightened the cold cloth around his ankle, taking care to keep as much gathered ice and slush as she could inside the embrace of the makeshift bandage. Handing the shoe to the boy, she turned her back to him, and knelt down. "I'll get you out of here in a moment. Hold tight, and don't let go."

As the two emerged from the building, another sight shook her up. Lily gasped as the Destroy returned to view; it wasn't the vaguely humanoid creature she had witnessed. In her time in the building, the Destroy had become a fully human-shaped monster, and as Lily turned to run, green beams swept across the land again.

Most of them were directed at the skies, but a few traced their fiery path across the ground all the same. Lily flinched as a roving beam cut a swath through the line of buildings on both sides of the streets in front of her, and several tonnes of concrete and steel crashed and crumbled onto the streets.

The boy's grip on her right shoulder tightened considerably. "It's… it's blocked…"

"It's okay," Lily murmured, looking around. Her gaze settled on an alleyway, and she took off as fast as her legs could carry her. If she was lucky, she should be somewhere near Tempelhof, south of the city center; if she made for the border of the city first, she could avoid being shot at, and maybe even make contact with the remnants of the ZAFT forces gathering at the city edges as well.

Wisps of condensation from her breath streamed out behind Lily as she ran, with all the strength she could muster, her previous thoughts forgotten. She had a life to save. She would not falter in her duty.

And as the touch of the metal of her pendant and dog tags against her chest, with every step she took, reminded her, she had a mission to uphold the honour of what had been her closest friend. Just as he had made every effort to be by her side, to keep contact with her, until her own parents had stepped in with their cold countenances and perceived values, she had the duty to treasure the lives that he had fought for. Her consciousness was ashamed at the hate she had shown moments ago, when her anger had gotten the better of her thoughts.

Coordinator. Natural. It didn't matter to her. The armband she wore, the crest of a snake entwined around a sword that was sewn onto her uniform's collar, was a reminder of the vow she took that day, when she visited his house, when she met with his parents, nearly ten years after they had last met, to bridge the gap that had torn them apart.

To tear down the cruel wall that others would construct around them, not caring for their feelings, or for the peace of the world.

The thunderous howl of a missile off its course, its warhead perhaps defeated by a glancing shot and ECM combined, screamed overhead, burying itself into the side of a five-story building; moments later it exploded, sending fist-sized chunks of brick and concrete everywhere, accompanied by a deadly hail of iron, steel, glass, and wood shrapnel. Lily turned, ignoring the fire in her calves, and prayed hard that her own ankle wouldn't give way, as she sprinted for the nearest cover she could find; a small area in-between two buildings, housing a rubbish chute.

The next moment, Lily's view was of a person lying face-down on the ground, the boy shaking her, asking if she was okay, but as though from a great distance. Pumped with adrenalin, her eyes caught sight of a nearby chunk of concrete, and her mind managed to put two and two together. Even if she had a helmet, the concrete chunk had left her consciousness a churning mess. It was nothing short of sheer luck that she had taken the hit instead of the boy; his head would have been caved in by that flying fragment.

"I'm fine," she said, bracing herself against the ground, trying to ignore the trembling in her arms. "Are you hurt?"

The boy shook his head, and recoiled a little as Lily took off her helmet and put it on him.

Lily's legs wobbled as she picked him up, her mind shutting out the usual sensations of straining muscle. "Good. We're going to continue, alright? Hold tight onto that helmet too."

With every step forward, with every breath taken, Lily cleared her thoughts, and forced the fog within her mind to go away. Her legs still shook, and her path was waving left and right as she forced herself to run, but her mind was hers again.

And more than ever, the memory of that close friend, in their childhood days, being by her side, comforting her from the bullying antics of her classmates, trying to keep her from being taken away, was keeping her going. Even when she had gotten herself mixed up with a clique of supremacist classmates, he had always been by her side, forcing his way through, enduring the physical and worded abuse of other children twice as strong as him. At an age where she was lost in her purpose, bewildered by the hate and arrogance that had suddenly sprung up around her for no good reason, he had been her anchor.

She regretted every moment that had come after. How her parents had whisked her off to the PLANTs, claiming to be acting in her interest. She had seen the status her parents had obtained after the PLANTs opened up their doors to Naturals directly related with first-generation Coordinators; she was respected by her peers, but her parents were lucky to get by without sidelong glares and barely-concealed disgust aimed at them. Even in the PLANTs, the vision of a country united in peril was a false vision. She had merely traded the open hatred of the Atlantic Federation for the simmering anger that was kept bottled up in the PLANTs.

She turned her gaze backwards, seeing the black obelisk getting driven back. The light of beam blasts and sabre strikes on shields gave her hope; if it could be delayed from returning to its homicidal rampage, she might have a change to get out of here.

Even the arcing beam that was a mere two meter away from her side did not pause her steps. Dashing through the steam kicked up by the searing weapon, she continued running, the warmth on her back, the trembling grip of someone seeking aid and comfort serving to power her own actions even further.

She had pledged her duty to be one where lives were not only preserved, but healed, to be returned to the living as soon as possible. It was her hands, guided after hearing the last tale of her closest friend, from his old parents, now yearning for nothing more than an end to senseless conflict and petty squabbles fuelled by personal interest and misguided values.

Her childhood friend, who had given her the experience needed to open her eyes to the madness that consumed the world, allowed her to steer clear of being consumed by it. The gift had been given to her via his parents; his interactions with his parents while he was still alive, was the thing that had helped give form to the forgiveness that she had been secretly seeking all these years. That moment when she had spoken with his parents after such a long time, to know that he had not hated her for his, and the Earth Sphere's predicament, was the moment she had sought since the beginning of the Bloody Valentine War.

She could finally openly acknowledge it. She was proud to have known him. She was proud to have been his friend.

She was proud to have shared his childhood memories with him.

And as he had never given up trying to reach out a helping hand towards her, she would also never give up trying to reach out a helping hand towards anyone who needed her help.

**CE 73 January 5****th****, ZAFT Emergency Field Command Camp at Mittenwalde, Berlin, Germany, Eurasian Federation**

**13 46**

Lily eased herself out of the sleeping bag, feeling her bones creak with every action she took. Her muscles still ached, sapping any strength she tried to put into them.

It had been two days after the Destroy was felled in combat. She wasn't clear of the records, but apparently, the ZAFT warship _Minerva_ and its Impulse GUNDAM had been the ace of the battle. Something nagged at Lily's mind about that recounting of events; she remembered that there were clearly more flying mobile suits around that didn't look like a DINN or BABI, but currently, there were more important things to do than nitpick at official releases of battle records.

The boy had been reunited with his older sister, who had been evacuated earlier. Lily had watched them leave for their family, her heart finally eased that she hadn't been toiling in vain, and from what she had heard, she had blacked out on the spot.

"You look fine today," Nick said, entering her tent. He looked worse for the wear, but he was otherwise still alive; tossed out of the CAV far earlier than Lily, he had chanced upon a group of people hiding out in a half-collapsed bunker, and had led them to safety.

".. I guess," Lily said. "I… I don't know what to say now, really. All this carnage… and the Eurasian Federation's plea for aid… everything's all getting tangled."

"Such is the politics of the battlefield, I guess", Nick said. "Well, eat some breakfast into you, and we'll get back to our work. The triage centres have yet to empty out, and it'll take a few more flights to do so."

"I understand," Lily said, clutching at the pendant hanging over her neck. She popped the casing open, and a photo of a boy and girl, both laughing without a care in the world, stuck in her view.

Lily gripped the pendant tighter. _For the both of us. Watch over me, William. _

**Afterword:**_I apologize for taking a long break, but it's been to organize where I wanted to finally take this story collection to its conclusion.__And now, we've finally reached one of Destiny's iconic moments, the Berlin battle, covered here through the eyes of someone on the ground. For those of you who were expecting mobile suit combat, I apologize, but I've planned very little MS combat for most of the stories in this second arc of _Tales of the Cosmic Era_. Not that there won't be any, mind, but in the series there's just such a confounded view of the politics that there are very little situations to set up a proper combat scene._

_And for those who really don't know what Lily is going on in her head about, I humbly propose reading Chapter 6 again. _

_Five more stories to the end._


	31. Chapter 31: Man, God, Machine

_**Author's Note:**_

_This fanfic is to write upon some of the events in Gundam SEED and SEED Destiny that are not touched upon or mentioned in-series, but their dates are listed on GundamWikia and are thus treated as part of canon. They are therefore based upon actual happenings in the Cosmic Era universe, but the events within them are open to interpretation. This fanfic is also an attempt at showcasing a "what-if" of all sides involved in the wars, and how some of the events within the show might have come to be._

_Because there are no set dates within the SEED Destiny series, the dates here are displayed only for approximation of the events' chronological placing to the end of the Second Bloody Valentine War, and are not indicative of the exact timeframes of any events that occur in SEED Destiny._

**Gundam SEED: Tales of the Cosmic Era**

**Chapter 31: Man, God, Machine**

**CE 74 February 4****th****, Mendel Colony, Lagrange Point 4**

**06 03**

Senior Sergeant Enra Vitno drifted down the zero-gravity passageway, knocking aside a floating container in his progress. The obstruction careened into the metal walls, leaving no sound in the vacuum surrounding the twelve members of the ZAFT Infantry Marines Force as they gathered around a sealed door.

Unlike pilots forced into infantry action, Enra and his troopers wore far more protected combat gear, and their armour didn't just consist of a flak jacket that could be worn over a pilot suit. Armoured gauntlets, shoulder guards, thigh plates, and shin guards were the least of their protection; a composite layer chestplate and attached waist, groin, and stomach pouches holding hard plates, were all part of their standard wear, as was the multi-layered soft sections on their joints that afforded them their mobility.

Their helmets were reinforced, and each of them carried a full combat load, consisting of an assault rifle, four flashbangs, two fragmentation grenades, a pistol as a sidearm, and a combat knife, as well as their specialized equipment; one of the troopers carried a large signal set, and two more had backpacks filled with explosives and related gear.

Enra, however had something else not on anyone else's manifest; a machete. He had been given the weapon as a gift from his grandfather, on the eve of his departure from South Africa, for the PLANTs. He hadn't returned since; his parents had been killed in a car bomb incident when he was fourteen, his grandfather had died of illness during the end days of the Bloody Valentine War, and there were no relatives back on Earth to interact with anymore; at least, none that he could recognize.

As a first-generation Coordinator, Enra was alone, and the machete, which Enra had personally modified with a carbon blade, was his only remaining memento of his time on Earth.

Shaking his mind loose of those thoughts, Enra motioned for one of his soldiers to come forward. Corporal First Class Charles, his second, plugged a lockbreaker into an electrical maintenance port near the door, and the small device immediately began running through thousands of lines of possible passwords. Moments later, the door unlocked and unsealed itself, revealing yet another empty passageway into the depths of the abandoned colony, known to humankind by the name of Mendel.

Rifles out, two of Enra's troopers entered the silent tunnel, their helmet-mounted torch lights cutting through the darkness. Enra entered behind them, and motioned for the rest of his men to follow; twelve armoured figures then proceeded into the darkness.

"Sure is quiet here," Private Monrad said. "Can't believe this place was once called the crown jewel of genetic science."

"Places and people change, bro," Private Ashad said. "All that's left here are ghost dreams and wishes. If you're lucky, maybe you'll find an embryo floating about in the lower levels. Like where we are now."

Enra frowned as Monrad faked a retching sound, followed by a snigger from Ashad. "Better watch your words," Enra said. "If even one guy barfs, I'll be making you wear his helmet, Monrad."

Monrad managed to keep his giggles under control. "Sorry, 'sarge, won't happen again."

Corporal Charles braced his hand against the wall, and pushed himself off, moving beside Enra. "Still, of all places, why did we pick the outer hull to make our entrance? We could have just flown into the interior, and walked in where there was gravity."

"Don't ask me," Enra replied. "Keep it for mission command. That is, if you can get your question through what must be sixty voices clamouring for some explanation to this floating walk into the bowels of Mendel."

As it was the norm, Enra's team was but a part of the platoon to be deployed here; right now, over sixty ZAFT Marines were making their way throughout Mendel, towards key locations marked out by mission command. For Enra, who had survived the worst of the war, including the boarding action at Yggdrasil, and later the siege at Kaohsiung, during the Bloody Valentine War, such a mission was a walk in the park to him.

The only thing that he felt uneasy about was the sudden assignment; ever since the start of the Second Bloody Valentine War, most of ZAFT's infantry units, with the exception of those in the Expeditionary Force, had been nearly untouched by ZAFT command. The Space Fleet had been fighting defensive battles, negating the need for boarding parties and spacefront action; Enra had only been deployed one other time before this. Compared to his previous action rate in the last war, he was practically on holiday at the moment.

Still, a mission was a mission, and he knew full well what risks his men would encounter. Mendel had been wiped clean by a viral sabotage incident, and even after all these years, no one had fully mapped out the damaged and cleared areas of the place. He didn't want to risk one of his troopers dying a pitiable death just because they were messing around in an unlucky sector.

Nearing the end of the next doorway, Enra felt his boots settling down onto the ground. "Partial gravity. Looks like we're fully into the interior."

Charles once again worked his tools, and to Enra's mild surprise, the hallways re-pressurised, filling the vacuum with air. Moments later, the door slid open to reveal a laboratory room. Enra swept his gaze left and right as far as he could without entering the room. "Monrad, Ashad, you're up."

The two soldiers moved into the room, rifles at the ready, as their boots clicked against the metal plates that comprised of the floor. As Enra and the rest of the squad filed in, the door closed again. "Ain't nothing here, sarge," Monrad said, dropping from his alert position. "Just a lot of loose paper."

Enra moved around the room. "Check for hidden cabinets, files, the such."

Ashad flipped through a thick sheaf of paper. "Basic genetics. Huh."

Enra picked up a small pocketbook, and flipped through it. "Don't bother with those," he said, tossing the blank pocketbook away. "Try and look for compartments."

Fifteen minutes passed, and Enra decided to proceed further. "Well, maybe it's not in here. We're going in deeper."

"No lube?" Monrad asked, earning him a few laughs, and a forceful smack on his head from Charles.

"I'm sure Mendel's shaped just nicely to fit into your asshole," Enra said, a grin tugging at the corners of his lips. "Let's get going."

The squad moved from the room, the sound of their boots echoing off the walls, as they crossed another tunnel to a larger laboratory. The second room had Enra hold in his breath as they entered; he could recognize the Artificial Wombs that lined the room, devices that allowed science to replicate ideal conditions for the growth of a child with a specific set of genes. Thankfully, none of them held any embryos.

Most, if not all, of the PLANTs' second and third-generation Coordinators were born in Artificial Wombs. The chances of passive or benign changes and mutations to the embryos' genetic makeup, had they been gestated naturally, could be avoided, and the child would be born as envisioned. Enra remembered his grandfather saying that his parents had wanted crimson eyes; his own eyes were amber instead, and he was darker-skinned than either of his parents.

Personally, Enra felt slightly queasy at such a thought. Human birth, something that was natural, now had a mechanical, almost industrial element to it.

Keeping his mental silence, he motioned for his soldiers to fan out and begin searching. "What we're looking for, as you know, are notes, papers, and any suspicious records in other media. I've not been told the target name; as long as you see a document of suspect, pass it to me."

The troopers busied themselves searching, opening cabinets, tapping on floorboards, looking behind the Artificial Wombs, anything they could think of. Enra himself was looking at a portable memory drive, and had placed it into his pack, when his comm unit crackled to life.

"This is Solar Sail to Charlie Squad, did you find anything?"

Enra's liaison ship was a single _Laurasia_-class frigate, the _Eschaton_, which was currently parked in orbit around Mendel. While Enra was familiar with such medium-priority missions, he still wondered what would happen to the frigate, and them, by extension, if OMNI space forces penetrated this far into the zone. Assuming the worst was part of his job scope, after all.

"Negative, Solar Sail, nothing on my side," Enra replied. "How about the other teams?"

"Alpha and Bravo squads have negative reports, Charlie."

"Roger that. Charlie will continue the search," Enra said, cutting the link.

"Sergeant," one of his soldiers called out, waving a memory chip. "I found something else here. A chip and a book."

"Let me see it, Lucia," Enra said, moving over. Corporal Lucia passed him the chip and the book, and Enra frowned as he opened the pages.

"This… it's a personal growth log." Enra remarked.

Through the helmet visor, Enra could see Lucia's eyebrows rise in surprise. "…A growth log?"

Enra gestured towards the Artificial Wombs. "Those things." He moved over to one of them, brushing his gauntleted fingers over the ID panel attached to the bottom of the device. "ASV-233. It's the log for this one."

Lucia pored over the empty device. "Did the embryo make it?"

Enra flipped through the book, and he felt his stomach clench as he processed the last few logs in the final page that had been written upon. "No. The embryo in it was used for a gene modification experiment. It suffered catastrophic cell failure three days before the safe period, and was disposed of."

Lucia scowled, her teeth bared. "Damn."

"Well, it was a gene modification experiment. I don't expect them to keep the embryo around for the full nine months. Success or failure, it was probably destined for the bin the moment it was conceived."

"Shit," Charles remarked. "And they used to call this place the crown jewel?"

"Like it or not, the successes of humankind are built upon the corpses of many of our own, Charles," Enra said, pocketing the book. "Did anyone find anything else?"

One by one, the soldiers reported in the negative. "Looks like Lucia was our lucky winner for this room," Monrad said.

"I wouldn't have minded letting you find that instead," Lucia muttered.

The Marines proceeded out of a second door in the room, their steps bringing them through a long hallway and into a larger room, one than had Enra stumped as to its purpose. A few vats lined the corners of the cavernous room, each about the size of a pressure cooker. Other laboratory items and effects were strewn across the room as well. The soldiers themselves were standing on a metal grating walkway.

"'The hell is this place?" one of the troopers, Private Harad, asked, as the squad descended the stairs. "I'm not familiar with any of this equipment…"

"Maybe they use 'em to make baby soup," Monrad said.

"Maybe," Enra said. "Right, troopers, you know the drill."

Even as the soldiers split off to search the room, Charles' voice sounded out on the command channel. "You know, sergeant, why get Marines for this kind of job? Wouldn't they want an investigation team?"

"High command has anticipated the possibility of bandit action in this region," Enra said. "So we get to do the dirty work."

"Yeah, but you'd expect something bigger with a sweep operation; we clear the place, and the science guys sweep up behind." Charles replied. "This is almost like we're sneaking around here."

"That sounded too much like a verbal jinx," Ashad quipped.

"Damn, Ashad, some things aren't meant to be said out loud," Harad said.

Monrad laughed as he straightened up. "Damn right, Ashad. Look what your words brought me."

Enra strode over as Monrad passed him two data chips, as well as a small stack of schematics. The troopers gathered around out of reflex, as Enra pocketed the chips and leafed through the schematics.

"These look kind of familiar," another soldier, Corporal Cayun, remarked. "They're pressure containers for mixing chemicals. And those words look like chemical indicators…"

"You mean this place is a drug factory?" Lucia asked.

"Maybe," Cayun said. "Could also be DNA extraction and modification," he said, pointing to one of the sealed-environ units that lined the walls of the room. Scientists, using such equipment, could carry out chemical experiments in completely sterile conditions by remote-controlling mechanical manipulators situated in the unit itself. "It would certainly fit what 'sarge was reading out earlier."

A brief bout of silence followed. "This is getting too spooky for me," Ashad said, finally breaking the hold Cayun's words had on the squad.

"I'll keep that in mind the next time you take your off and leave, Ashad," Enra said, packing the documents as well. "Right, let's get our asses off to the next point."

Unlike the previous two movements, the troopers walked silently, their thoughts filled with what they had read. It was no secret that the Cosmic Era had its time when genetic experiments were carried out without hesitation, by all factions, but none of them had directly encountered this before. Enra himself had dealt with the dismembered bodies of enemies, as well as the grotesque deaths of former team members by weapons fire and accidents, but reading about the ultimate limit of humanity's hubris was a new experience for him.

To Enra's surprise, the next door's light was green, indicating that it was unlocked. Harad moved forward to open it, and twelve rifles snapped to the alert position when the door opened to reveal something lying across the entrance.

For a few seconds, all twelve Marines stared at the collapsed stack of books strewn along their path. Monrad was the first to break the silence with a laugh; even then, however, Enra could detect the nervousness in the usually cheeky man's voice.

A simple search mission was doing a mighty fine job of creeping them out. Enra silently wished that he had applied for leave for this week.

Moving into the room, the soldiers in front immediately hopped to their tasks without being told. It was not a very large area; the place looked like a two-man bunk. As Enra and five other troopers searched their way through the messy room, the others stood guard outside.

"Sergeant," Charles said, "I'm not hearing any scheduled reports from the _Eschaton. _The other teams have also been oddly silent."

Enra knew that general radio silence had been a requirement for this mission, but with Charles pointing it out, he realized that the channel feed from the frigate had completely vanished. "Try and raise them," he replied. "Get to Peter and tell him to check his comns relay gear too."

As Charles moved out of the room, Ashad approached him. "Sarge, I don't want to be a motor mouth, but this mission is seriously knocking me off my rhythm."

"No complaints, Ashad," Enra replied. "We do what we're told."

"Yeah," Ashad said. "I know."

Cayun fished something out of a drawer that he had forced open with his combat knife. "Got something, 'sarge. A couple of trinkets and this book… it doesn't look like just anyone's pocketbook."

Enra took the book and, rather than flip through it, began reading from the first page. As he had expected, he did not like what he saw. "This handwriting looks similar to the one in the room with Artificial Wombs."

Lucia peered over. "What does it say?"

Enra regarded his subordinates warily. "How much do you guys know about gene experiments and recent genetic news incidents?"

Most of the troopers shook their heads, but Cayun was the first to speak. "I'm sure you're not talking about the recent hospital incident where they mixed up DNA treatment bottles. Is this about the fertility problem with second and third-generation Coordinators?"

Ashad's expression was one of incredulity. "Cayun, that won't even make the auditions of a comedy routine."

"I'm not joking," Cayun retorted. The former geneticist, now enlisted in the Marines, glanced at the open page in Enra's hands. "It's a genetic error present in all Coordinators. Second generation Coordinators suffer from a five to ten percent chance to be born infertile. By the third generation, that infertility rate increases to as much as fifty. It was just that during my time, nobody imagined that the genetic error would make such a huge leap within the span of a single generation."

"Holy shit," Lucia said. "What about fourth generation Coordinators?"

"Unknown," Cayun said. "The demographic makeup of the population of the PLANTs are currently just moving into the zone in-between the second and third generations. I left my previous job to pursue an engineering career even before any chances of the first fourth-generation Coordinator birth; if I'm not wrong, it should have been about seven to eight years ago."

"How did they hide this from the population?" Monrad said. "I sure as hell wasn't aware of this."

"I firs realized it through a little-known science magazine published sometime early in CE 70, that I've subscribed to for some time time," Cayun replied. "It was first diminished as bullshit, of course, and it was also partially censored at that time by the medical boards; given the political situation at that time, I don't blame them from hiding it to prevent the Coordinator morale from suffering yet another blow. What astounds me, however, is how they've continued denying its existence even up until now."

"Shit, what the hell's going on?" Monrad muttered. "Suddenly it's become like the plot of some shitty virus survival movie!"

Enra's reply was interrupted as Charles reached into the room again. "Sergeant, nothing worked. Even Peter can't get the signal to reach. There's definitely combat jamming going on."

Enra's mind quickly shuffled through his priorities, immediately settling on the one he could put into action now. "Right, I'm pulling out from our current operation; we're going to return the same way we came in. Ashad, Monrad, you're up front with me. Charles, you have the rear."

The soldiers quickly fell into formation, and as one unit, Enra's troopers retraced their path in a hurry. All stealth was forgotten; their boots echoed loudly against the walls as they navigated through the rooms, their fingers positioned at the ready, on the trigger guard of their rifles.

The moment Monrad stepped into the first room that they had begun their search from, gunshots sounded out from the opposite of the room. The troopers scattered; Enra, Monrad, Ashad, and two more soldiers dived for cover behind two tables and a steel cabinet. The tables were overturned them in short order to provide some meagre cover, while the others were forced back into the corridor.

"Monrad, Ashad, covering fire!" Enra shouted. "Vance, two grenades, general throw!"

"Fragmentation?" Private Vance asked, as Monrad and Ashad fired over their cover.

"Flashbang. Take it to them," Enra said. "Charles,be careful of the rear. I don't know how, but they might find a way to strike from behind!"

"Roger," Charles replied. "Lucia, Sarno, see if you can peek over that doorway and give your own welcomes!"

Vance lobbed two grenades towards the general direction of the gunfire, and Enra readied his own two fragmentation grenades, tossing them as far as he could from his position of cover. From beyond the doorway, Lucia and Private Sarno peeked out, their rifle shots managing to catch one of the enemies in its torso. The other troopers ducked to avoid the same fate as Monrad, Ashad, and Enra added their own fire to the mix, and Vance took the chance to initiate the counterattack.

"Flashbang!" Vance shouted, lobbing the grenades over his cover as hard as he could. "Eyes closed!"

Enra's troopers quickly hid behind whatever cover they had, as Vance's grenades hit the ground once, bounced, and exploded, casting harsh white light throughout the entire room. Taking the chance, Enra peeked out from behind his cover, and tossed two fragmentation grenades. Without the enemy's concentrated cover fire, he was able to lob the devices straight into the heart of the enemy formation, the dual explosions tossing the black-suited troopers about like ragdolls. "Up! Take them out!" Enra shouted, and propped his rifle over the table. Eleven other soldiers followed suit, and rifle fire struck the enemy soldiers, some of which were struggling to stand, and with others attempting to crawl away.

The firefight had ended as quickly as it had began. Enra's troopers fanned out into the room, checking bodies for responses. "Kick the guns away from those who're reaching for it," Enra said. "If they're still coherent, I want to talk to them."

"That's it?" Monrad asked. "Almost too easy."

Harad pulled the helmet off one of the soldiers. "He's still okay, 'sarge." Turning to the wounded trooper, Harad hauled him into a sitting position and locked eyes with the enemy soldier. The trooper wore armour that was far smoother in its design than either ZAFT or OMNI had; it was also all-black, and had thinner armour. And as far as Harad could see, there were no markings on the soldier's helmet or body armour.

"No markings," Ashad said. "Who the hell are these guys?"

"That notwithstanding, that's a pretty pale guy," Enra said, looking at the soldier. "Far too pale."

The wounded trooper merely stared up at Enra, eyes unmoving, his lips motionless.

""Sarge," Sarno said. He had removed the helmet of another soldier, and Enra could see that something discomforted him. "Take a look at their faces."

Looking between Sarno and Harad's charges, Enra realized, with growing dread, that they had the same face. "Vance, Cayun, get the helmet off another one, doesn't have to be a live one. Now."

To Enra's horror, it was exactly as he predicted; he had four enemies with the same faces, the same unnatural skin color.

"God," Monrad said. "Oh, god. What the f-"

"Don't know, and I don't want to stick along to know." Enra said. "Drop those guys. C'mon, let's get going-"

Ashad suddenly crumpled to the ground, as a fresh wave of enemy troopers entered the room, their weapons quickly felling the first target they saw; Enra glanced at the enemy, and realized that a good number of them were carrying machineguns, heavy weapons that could make short work of even ZAFT Marines.

Even as the rest of Enra's troopers opened fire, more of the enemy entered the room, sprinting for cover from which to take up firing positions. Assault rifle fire, in large volumes, could easily overwhelm even their body armour, and a few of the troopers entering the room were carrying grenade launchers.

"Shit! Back! Through the doorway!" Enra said, as the troopers affected a hasty retreat back to where they had come from, taking any opportunity they could to return fire. A few of the enemy fell back, some, to the floor, but the return fire, and the enemy's increasing numbers, were simply too great for Enra to entertain any notion of ordering his men to hold their ground.

"Ashad, he-" Monrad began.

His unfinished sentence was rewarded with a violent push, as Enra grabbed his subordinate by his arm, and shoved him into the doorway where the rest of the squad was. Slamming the door controls, Enra turned to face his troopers as the doorway hissed shut behind him, and locked itself.

"Mundo!" Enra said. "Rig this door within a minute! A few charges are enough! Vance! Stay with him until he's done. Charles! Take the rest, and secure that second doorway we passed by a while back!"

Charles quickly led the troopers away, while Enra grabbed Monrad by his shoulder. "We'll come back for him later. Definitely."

Monrad swallowed. "I… uh, thanks, sir. Sorry. I lost myself."

Enra patted the trooper's shoulder. "Go link up with Charles and the rest."

As Monrad ran off, Corporal Mundo stood up. "Done, Sergeant. The first guy through this door will go flying."

"Alright, let's move!" Enra said. "Time's ticking away!"

Moving through the room with the small vats, Enra returned to the secondary doorway, where Charles and the others were waiting. The door was already open, and Charles and the other troopers were already within. To Enra's despair, however, Harad was slumped against the ground, with Lucia kneeling beside him. The blood around him was little, but Enra could guess what had happened.

Lucia stood up and shook her head. "Multiple chest wounds. It was the internal bleeding that did him in."

"Same with Ashad. We'll come back for him later," Enra said, quashing his emotions. "The rest of you, through this door. Now."

Entering as the last man, Enra shut the door and engaged its electronic lock again. "Mundo, set up a bigger charge this time."

With the trap rigged, the squad proceeded along Enra's alternate path after, through the bunk residential sections of Mendel, a section of the colony that was almost unlike their previous locations. As they went, Enra had the teams two explosive experts set up several traps behind sealed doors; by the fifth door, they were out of charges.

Enra was almost tempted to set up firing points at several locations, but something kept him going; the disconcerting information that they had retrieved, the near-coincidental arrangement of their search points, the lack of fire support, and the hastiness of their mission. Now that they were already discovered, stopping would mean getting hammered in and torn to shreds.

Even as they ran, Enra's team chanced upon another enemy squad near a T-shaped pathway. Having checked the pathway, the squad was proceeding when Sarno, who was taking rear alongside Enra and Vance, fell, as the doorway at the far end opened, and an enemy trooper, a heavy machine gun in his arms, advanced, bullets spraying the walls. Behind him were more of the troopers, rifles at the ready, as they advanced under the cover of fire.

"Monrad!" Enra screamed, pulling a grenade from his pouch. "Pull him back!"

With a mighty heave, Monrad had Sarno on his shoulders, and Enra quickly chucked a grenade around the corner. Even through the roar of the resultant explosion, the sound of heavy boots hitting the floor could be heard, as the enemy soldiers charged.

Enra barely got into the next section in time, activating the emergency door to seal the doorway behind him. Barely a minute later, a bright light shone through the top of the door, the light of a plasma cutter evident.

"I… can't make it… 'sarge…" Sarno wheezed; Enra could see that Sarno was bleeding out from several places at once; even when on the ground, he had taken fire from the heavy machinegun. "Put… me… down…"

Enra set Sarno down, as Lucia came forward with an emergency sealing kit. Sarno, however, pushed her away. "No! Not… for me…"

Enra was silent for a brief moment. "We're going."

"Sergeant! You can't be ser-"

"Get going!" Enra shouted. "Speed is the key! We're not being fast enough!"

Lucia glanced at Sarno, who had already stopped breathing, and wordlessly took her place at the middle of the squad.

Even as Charles quickly stepped in to gather up the remaining troopers, Enra removed Sarno's helmet, and closed his eyes. "We'll be back for you, too."

The soldiers moved even faster afterwards, only stopping to check for corners and doorways. Nearing a bend to another hallway, Enra felt something out of the ordinary; the sensation of sand underneath his boots. "We're near the exit. Everyone, check your suit integrity."

As the soldiers sealed their helmets and checked themselves for leaks, Enra peeked over the bend – and promptly withdrew his head as gunfire smashed into the wall beside him.

"Maginegun fire!?" Lucia asked.

"We don't have time for this," Enra said. "Charles, flash 'em. Yacob, switch to your heavy gear."

Private Yacob nodded, drawing out a grenade launcher from his pack. "Time for payback. Direct assault, sarge?"

"Get 'em," Enra said, even as Charles threw a Flashbang from around the corner, the device bouncing off the walls, and skittering for some distance along the ground, before igniting.

Yacob fished out two high-explosive shot from his pack, and loaded the first shot in. The moment the flashes died down, he leaned over the corner. "And… one away," he said, waiting for the impact to echo throughout the hallway. The second shot soon followed, and the rest of Enra's team charged in, rifle barrels alight in flame, as they demolished the remaining enemy troopers reeling from their attack.

As the troopers cleared off the rest of the enemies, Enra halted at the exit to the hallway. Outside, red rock expanded as far as the eye could see, and a sandy wind was blowing across the landscape. What had caught his attention, however, wasn't the scenery, but the scene of battle that now unfolded in front of his eyes.

In the skies that filled most of Mendel's interior, the light of beam weapons could be clearly seen. Even as Enra tapped into his suit's comm systems, an explosion appeared, and a mobile suit came crashing down meters from where he stood.

The shoulder of the ZAKU Warrior bore the ID codes of a unit attached to the _Eschaton_.

"… no good, we c- - -old them off! They're taking u- -part!"

"Everyone, set up firing positions facing the rear! Charles, you're free to make minor adjustments as you see fit."Enra gritted his teeth, and triggered his comm device. "This is Charlie Team to all allied forces from the _Eschaton_! Respond, if you can hear me!"

"- - -ou, Charlie Team? This is Tiger One, where are the other teams?"

"We're the only ones in contact, Tiger One," Enra said. "What happened to the _Eschaton_?"

"She took a hit to her engines and reactor," Tiger One replied. "We were launched, on the captain's orders, to secure the interior of this place against an attack, and await a rescue fleet, but I saw the _Eschaton_ taking a gutting blow to her before I entered this region." Another mobile suit hit the ground, this one a model that Enra wasn't familiar with; it resembled a 105 Dagger from the previous war, but painted in a black-and-grey mix, with maroon highlights on its lower torso and feet. Mounted on its frame was additional, angular armour on its left arm, and its right arm held an oversized sword.

Moments later, the mobile suit exploded, and Enra ducked behind a wall to avoid becoming a casualty to debris. "Tiger One! Is extraction possible at this time?"

"There are quite a number of these bastards flying around, Charlie, I don't know if I can hold them all off. You'll need to f-"

Tiger One's link cut off abruptly, leaving Enra a foreboding feeling as to the impending fate of his troopers. As though the fates were laughing at him, armoured troopers rounded the corners of the hallway behind him, and opened fire.

Even as Enra dived for cover, he saw grenades bounce into the midst; Lucia was thrown out against the wall from a particularly close blast, enough than Enra couldn't tell whether she was alive or dead. The soldiers continued peppering their location with fire as they rushed Enra's position; the first few enemy troopers fell, but the rest, as though undaunted by the prospect of death, continued rushing forward. Yacob was shot as he attempted to fire his grenade launcher to thin out the crowd, clutching his chest even as he fell backwards, and within seconds the enemy soldiers had bypassed their last bit of cover.

The ensuing firefight was swift, but deadly. With the soldiers of both sides engaging at point-blank, there was no hesitation allowed, no time to spare. Monrad shot one of the soldiers, and was pulling for a reload when he was shot in the head; Charles' rifle was empty, and he was overwhelmed even as he pulled out his knife to take another enemy soldier with him.

Enra had tossed his rifle away, its magazine empty; drawing out his machete, he rushed the closest soldier before the enemy could take aim, chopping into the joints of his enemy's combat armour. The soldier barely flinched as the reinforced blade cut through insulating material and composite layers, deep into the bone, and the soldier smashed his rifle into Enra's helmet; only a last-minute dodge saved Enra, as the rifle butt scraped past his head instead of smashing into him directly.

Head ringing, but otherwise unharmed, Enra backhanded the enemy trooper, and took the chance while the soldier was disoriented to stick the machete into the exposed area between helmet and chestplate. Blood gushed as Enra pulled the blade swiftly across the neck-suit material, the carbon blade slicing through artificial fabric and synthetic layers, and deep into flesh.

Even with his ferocity, the enemy was far more numerous, and far more dogged. Vance was already dead, his helmet holed from multiple bullet impacts, and Peter was bleeding out from a bullet wound when another trooper stopped just to finish him off. Cayun was likewise permanently down, slumped against the wall with several bullet holes in his armour.

Shoving the corpse of his previous target off him, Enra realized that his men were all dead, or soon to be. The enemy troopers turned to face him as one.

Then a green pillar of fire lanced through the ceiling, turning Enra's vision a blinding white for a brief moment, before plunging him into a final darkness, as a howling roar shook him off his feet.

**CE 74 February 4****th****, ?, ?, Lagrange Point 4**

**? ?**

The man grinned as he watched his creations at work. Truly, humanity was such a collection of fools, to reject the full extent of the power of genetic manipulation. By his hands he had an unstoppable, completely loyal army. By his knowledge he had influenced and gathered those of like mind under him.

The forces of ZAFT had been a joke under the fury of his troops; they had effortlessly smashed the single frigate skirting around the colony, and had chased down the ZAFT mobile suit pilots that had escaped the death of their carrier ship. His infantry forces had mercilessly chased down the Marines wandering the interior of the colony, and from what he could tell from the reports, there had been an average of a 3:1 exchange rate in direct combat. It was not a bad rate at all, considering that his troops were vat-manufactured, planted with memories from a disk to give them their necessary skills, and given the bare minimum of training needed to get them familiarized with their tools. Given time, however, he was sure he could make them more than a match for any veteran, man for man.

"Ah, Mendel. Soon, we'll rid all these insolent invaders from you. Then, your rightful master can reclaim his throne here."

The man gritted his teeth as he remembered the reason for this hasty assault. Gilbert Durandal had been a sharp one. He had not expected such a quick reaction to his attempted incursion upon the PLANTs, much less such a response from the chairman of ZAFT. It had to be more than blind luck that he would order a search on this location, just because the health records of a few third-generation Coordinators had been illegally accessed.

Gilbert Durandal was dangerous. More than Logos, more than Blue Cosmos, more than the annoyance that was the Three Ship Alliance currently running about on the surface of the Earth. Right now, the Coordinator's apathy at most matters regarding Naturals was their one weakness. If he had anticipated Gilbert's moves correctly, he would either obtain the ultimate panacea to the troubles of the Coordinators, or more worryingly, unite all of humanity within the next decade.

Not in social terms, nor in national terms. But in genetic terms.

He was sure now. Gilbert was aware of the Achilles' Heel of the Coordinator race at large. And he knew how to avert the disaster that was about to befall them without destroying the nation that they had fought two wars for.

As a person opposed to the very existence of Coordinators as a separate nation, he would do all he could to make sure that Durandal would be forced to use his trump cards. If he had to let that blundering oaf, Djibril, manhandle a couple of overly-destructive weapons, then so be it. He needed Durandal's fall from grace if he were to ever have a chance at succeeding. If he took out the Three Ship Alliance, then that was a bonus.

"One of you, put in a call to my friend. Tell him that he's free to go ahead with Requiem's construction. And tell him to leak it to Djibril as discreetly as possible."

Even as the men hopped to his task, another message came in. "Sir, we've got unknowns from another direction! They're not ZAFT or OMNI!"

The man was hardly surprised. "Terminal. The bastards. Prioritize the ZAFT forces! That lawless scum won't be able to match our firepower unless they've got a bit of backing!"

**CE 74 February 6****th****, ?, ?, Lagrange Point 4**

**21 46**

Enra awoke to a pounding headache and the sensation of having his entire body beaten black and blue.

By his side was a woman, who pushed him back as he struggled to rise. "Wh… who.. are… you…"

"I can see that your body isn't as ready as your mind. Go back to sleep," the woman replied. "You've been very lucky. And so were we. You'll know more when you're fully awake and ready."

Enra was in no state to resist. As soon as the woman had managed to push him back onto the bed, he was out cold again.

The woman merely glanced at Enra, as the heavily-sedated ZAFT Marine returned to a deep, blank slumber. _Something far beyond our ability to stop is moving into action, and it won't be just on a single front_. _If we leave it unchecked, both the Earth nations, the PLANTs, and whatever pockets of humanity left in the solar system will pay the full price for but the existence of one man, long-dead by this era._

She left the room, the door hissing shut behind her, as she walked down the hallway of a _Nelson_-class battleship. _Looks like it's time for Terminal to get busy again; and this time, we'll need to recall all of our allies_.

**Afterword:**

_In this chapter, I thought I'd use the chance to delve into one of the lesser-explored areas of military operations in Gundam; tactical fights, especially in the various ruined areas scattered around the CE settings. It's also to showcase the ZAFT infantry again (CE in general has terrible infantry, and it's not even because mobile suits are prolific), as well as try to provide insight into the behind-the-curtain scenes regarding the Coordinator infertility issue; Mendel is one of my favourite places in the series, and you can guess why. It's not expounded upon enough, and I intend to turn this into a major plot point._

_Although that might have to be temporarily shelved in favour of finishing off one war first before starting another. _


	32. Chapter 32: Pride On The Line

_**Author's Note:**_

_This fanfic is to write upon some of the events in Gundam SEED and SEED Destiny that are not touched upon or mentioned in-series, but their dates are listed on GundamWikia and are thus treated as part of canon. They are therefore based upon actual happenings in the Cosmic Era universe, but the events within them are open to interpretation. This fanfic is also an attempt at showcasing a "what-if" of all sides involved in the wars, and how some of the events within the show might have come to be._

_Because there are no set dates within the SEED Destiny series, the dates here are displayed only for approximation of the events' chronological placing to the end of the Second Bloody Valentine War, and are not indicative of the exact timeframes of any events that occur in SEED Destiny._

**Gundam SEED: Tales of the Cosmic Era**

**Chapter 32: Pride On The Line**

**CE 74 February 17****th****, Salt Lake City outskirts, North America, Atlantic Federation**

**08 03**

Fredrick Rayburn, former Brigadier General of the Third Atlantic Army, watched the television with an impassive stare, as the man known to the world as Gilbert Durandal, the Chairman of the PLANTs, addressed the world, announcing his intention to fight against the shadowy organization he had named LOGOS.

"That's quite a fierce accusation he's making, there," Fredrick's wife, Talissa Harbeck, said. Joining her husband on the sofa, she sighed. "What a troublesome world we live in. There's always something hiding in the shadows."

"Great civilizations have sometimes been shaped, for better or worse, by one or two people who chose the right time to cast their hands from the shadows." Fredrick turned to his wife. "For better or worse, their insistence at retiring me has been a blessing. Now I won't need to contend with the ranking officers' attempts to get me to give a damn."

Talissa chuckled. "You may say that, but I remember quite well that you made quite a few enemies in your time. You were never one to bow down to racial pressure, after all."

Fredrick couldn't help but smile as he remembered the times spent with those under his command. He was proud of their willingness to uphold the honour of the nation, and more importantly, to set themselves distinct from the rest of their brethren who were either too afraid to go against Blue Cosmos, or else were in full support of it.

Right now, however, they had been scattered to the winds, the last attempt of a few powerful people, vengeful at the success they had enjoyed. Only a few men within the Atlantic Federation military could still hope to rein in their forces, before Blue Cosmos subverted them all to their lost cause.

"Well, I did pass on the reins of responsibility, after all," Fredrick said, settling into the sofa with his coffee mug in hand. "If he was really as strong as he had been than night when we met, then he'll be able to keep the Atlantic Federation from pulling itself apart… perhaps even regurgitate the worst of it to offer to ZAFT, if all goes well."

Talissa was lost in thought for a moment, wandering though her memories until one night a few years ago, at a military event that her husband had insisted on taking her along with. "You don't mean that rouge-lookalike, do you? What was his name again… Cornerstone?"

Fredrick couldn't help but laugh, despite the seriousness of Chairman Durandal's announcement. "I only hope he's not in over his head. Sometimes, he forgets that he's not the only one fighting the good fight."

**CE 74 February 19****th****, 48 kilometers from Ellenfort Joint Forces Hub Base, Danbury, New York, North America, Atlantic Federation**

**10 24**

Captain Seryes Halland, squadron leader of the 189th Armor Tactics Squadron _Thunder Swords_, 18th Armor Tactics Regiment _Storm Blades_, 5th Division, 3rd Atlantic Army, of the Atlantic Federation Armed Forces, was at a loss of what to do.

Everything had rolled over her so quickly. Chairman Durandal's announcement had sent the nation's military into a frenzy; even with her rank, Captain Seryes had been at a loss as to what high command had been so busy for. The press conference by ZAFT, at nine in the morning, had thrown half the Atlantic Federation into barely-restrained chaos.

Apparently, emergency orders had been passed down for the majority of Atlantic forces to deploy at the European theatre for a massive attack operation, possibly against ZAFT's Gibraltar Base. What had caused the military to stall, however, was the sudden nature of those orders, as well as resistance from several military leaders at having their forces moved without prior consent. Things had escalated, with ranking officers muscling others into following their orders, first with threats, then with weapons, and as Seryes had found out to her horror just this morning, the entire nation's military was now in a firefight with itself.

Seryes' comm unit crackled to life. "This is Storm Command to all units, status report."

"Lightning Leader here, nothing on my side."

"Squall Leader here, likewise."

"Thunder Leader here," Seryes said. "No problems on my end."

"Roger. Storm Leader out."

Seryes sighed and leaned back into her seat. After ZAFT's announcement regarding the shadowy organization they called the Logos, the Atlantic Federation's military channels begun swarming with calls. Some of those were confirmation calls, but others were emergency deployment orders, most of which went to the Atlantic Fleet currently situated offshore New York. From what Seryes had seen of incoming video footage, the units streaking towards the battlegroup had all the intent in the world to join up with it.

What complicated matters were the Atlantic Fleet's previous orders. They had been tasked with bringing reinforcements to Heaven's Base at Iceland, but that had not been due for another month. Now that those orders had been accelerated, entire units were being thrown into confusion, the military moving about aimlessly, without guidance, without purpose.

At least, for those who weren't in the loop of what was going on.

At ten sharp, Seyres had gotten an emergency scramble order; a mobile suit unit, the 277th Armor Tactics Squadron, had evaded orders to stand down and passed through Scranton, destroying the units sent to stop them. It was clear as day that the unit was acting out of the chain of command, and so Seryes had been sent to stop them, by any means necessary.

It was obvious, from the radio chatter going on, that this was occurring on a wider scale across the nation. More than unauthorized actions, it was clear to all across the ranks of the military that something big had been going on behind the scenes all this while, and for those who still remained in command, none of them wanted to see the Atlantic Federation left to dry while their own forces deserted them, commanded by unknown leadership elements.

Although, if Seryes listened to the nagging voice within her subconscious, she had a pretty good idea of the organization likely to be behind this. Even for them, however, a nationwide coup d'état was well out of their league. Either they had been more entrenched than she thought, or there was a third force moving the nation in a wrong direction. Something worse than Blue C-

Seryes's comms crackled to life. "Thunder Two to Leader, I have them on my sensors," the feed fizzled for a moment, before the static faded enough for the voice of her second, Lieutenant Carl Turon, to come through. "Twelve mobile suits coming in at one o' clock. Twelve more following directly behind. They're being flanked by two dozen attack craft."

Seryes whistled, a low tune that, to those in her squadron who were familiar with her mannerisms, an indication of her mounting frustration. "A total of forty-eight combat units. I assume that their mobile suits are all flight-capable?"

"The first squadron is comprised of Windams. Block 5 specifications," Carl replied. "The second squadron are Jet Daggers, Block 20 specifications. The rest are VTOL light gunships."

Seryes gritted her teeth, a grinding that only she could hear. "All the shiniest and newest toys of their line. Even we've only got Block 0s." Seryes paused for the briefest of moments. "Can we call on the rest of the 18th Regiment for aid?"

Seryes regretted asking almost as soon as the last word left her mouth. It was on her data-link unit, as clear as day, a view of the expanded battlefield. The _Lightning Sabers_ and _Squall Spears_ Squadrons were going to have just as much of a hard time as her own unit would; the enemy had been a far larger force, and had split themselves into three groups , each the equivalent of an oversized air group close to fifty fighting units, to challenge the final defence line mounted here. Once clear, they were free to sail the Atlantic Ocean; to the great shame of the Atlantic Federation Navy, close to 70% of the ships in the Atlantic Fleet had defected, leaving them woefully under-strength to challenge the insurgents.

And as though to add insult to injury, her own squadron was short of two pilots. She had completely failed to see that coming; one of her own had been an enemy sympathizer, and shortly after taking off, had shot down another pilot before Seryes had destroyed the traitor unit herself, marking the position for support forces moving behind her to retrieve the wreckages of both machines. She doubted that either pilot had survived the incident, but that would be part of the paperwork she would deal with later. Not now.

"This is Thunder Leader to all units. Take up Flechette formation; sweep through the first squadron from its center and scatter their forces." Her Windam hefted its beam rifle, the matte black casing of the powerful weapon glinting in the sunlight, as the mobile suit cut through the morning air. Being somewhere approaching Montclair, the outskirts of New York were visible to them, an island of concrete grey set against the backdrop of a clear blue sky. "Don't let them have enough time to surround you. Hit them with sweeping passes; down the Dagger Ls, then the aircraft. We'll deal with the Windams at our leisure after that."

"Thunder Two, roger."

"Thunder Six, roger." Lieutenant Patricia Halward replied.

"Thunder Nine, roger." Lieutenant Edward Carren said.

2nd Lieutenant Claire Vinson, callsign Thunder Four, and Seryes' supposed partner in her chosen formation, was about to link up with her squadron leader when Seryes waved her unit away. "Go join up with Thunder Nine," Seryes said. "He'll need you inside the formation."

"What about you, commander?"

"I can hardly afford to charge in with such a situation. I'll be on gun overwatch."

Seryes knew that her words, taken another way, could have meant that she was going to hang back at range, while she sent the pilots under her to force their way through the heart of the enemy, but it was partially true; alone, her actions would have far less of an effect, and while she didn't doubt Carl's abilities should she kick the bucket in this battle, she was less than willing to present a chance for the enemy to do her in. Her skills in ranged combat were no less than any of her subordinates either; with any luck, if the Windams had their back turned to her by the ferocious charge of her pilots, she could get off a kill from behind before her opponents could box her in.

If Claire had any reservations about her commander, she had them hidden well. A short message of acknowledgement was all that she gave, before the comm link terminated, resolving into the commander's squadron-wide audio feed again.

Seryes' Windam shifted its position, the locking bolts on its shields running the customary last-minute diagnostic checks as the mobile suit loosened its grip on the equipment's handle. Her Windam propped its rifle up with its left hand, maintaining a fair bit of stability even in flight, as the other units of her squadron streaked on ahead.

"This is _Storm _Command to all _Storm_ units," the commander's voice cut in. "We've got Spearheads en route in twenty minutes from Steward National Air Guard Base; apparently, they were chasing this unit as well, and were held up by insurgent elements in their own base."

"We, ain't that a relief," Seryes grumbled, to no one in particular, a lopsided wry smile on her face. "If they're going to take more than twenty minutes to reach, however," she continued, eyeing the tactical display as the red and blue dots on the screen inched closer, "then they need to step up their game."

Almost immediately after, Seryes let loose her first shot; the green energy beam lanced forward, through the middle, to scatter the enemy formation. The Windams refused to budge at first, shifting the barest fraction to avoid the opening shot, but even they were forced to dive into evasive manoeuvres as the missiles on Seryes' Windam dislodged from their launch rails, streaking towards their targets. Her own squadron, arranged in tight arrowhead formations of threes, plunged through the enemy's first line of defence, and immediately set into the Jet Dagger Ls bringing up the rear; in one pass, three mobile suits fell out of the sky, their smoking carcasses leaving little doubt to their fate as the others scattered, and struggled to bring their weapons to bear. The enemy Jet Windams scattered, CIWS fire making short work of the missiles.

Seryes had no intention on following her squadron's path, however. Braking hard, her Windam swung its legs forward, thrusters flaring to reverse her direction, before it nimbly twisted its body to present its back towards the enemy. With a high-pitched whine, the Jet Windam's own main thrusters spat out their flames, propelling the mobile suit high into the air as the enemy squadron split their forces; four units followed in her direction, their own rifles raised, and the others scattered to intercept her unit.

"This is Thunder Leader to all units. Change of plans; tear through the aircraft formation once, and draw out the Jet Dagger Ls. Lure them into range and isolate them with Triangle Net."

Nine acknowledgement signals flashed in her HUD as the Jet Windams of the _Thunder_ _Swords _scattered, leaving the shattered husks of nearly a dozen attack craft to plummet through the skies. With the suburbs scattered below, Seryes hoped that the people had been given evacuation orders. As an officer, she was taught to consider both the military and civilian implications of collateral damage, but in such a lopsided situation, she had no qualms about placing the lives of her own subordinates above all else.

The sides of her Jet Windam's head unit erupted in gunfire, the mobile suit's CIWS cutting through the air to destroy the flock of a half-dozen anti-air missiles aimed her way. Rushing into the clouds, she increased the power on her unit, and felt her body being pushed into the seat by the immense G-forces as her Windam accelerated to one and a half times the speed of sound.

As she had hoped, the Windams chasing her, while equipped with the best machines possible, had been lacking in the skills department. Seryes' Jet Windam twisted gracefully in the air, aiming backwards to bring its beam rifle to bear on the nearest target, even as its body twisted to realign itself. While automatic targeting systems made using the sun as a backdrop a moot manoeuvre at best, most pilots still hesitated the pull the trigger out of physical reflex; it would also take a moment for the mobile suit's sensors to recalibrate itself to compensate for the sudden change in light intensity, and that was all she needed as a distraction.

The first Windam ran straight into her opening shot, so intent was its pilot on putting her units into sights that he had failed to anticipate the possibility of a reversal. The Jet Windam went down, the shot having torn through its right arm, leg, wing, and torso, and Seryes kept the throttle on maximum, her own mobile suit, aided by gravity, streaking downwards towards the enemy at speeds beyond what its engines could produce.

The first few shots of return fire struck against her unit's anti-beam shield, the wave of energy washing over the equipment piece. A warning sounded out about she shield's remaining structural integrity and coating strength, but to Seryes, it was a point beyond petty consideration. Her shot claimed another Windam, the idiot pilot having moved his shield arm to draw out his sabre; for what purpose, Seryes did not know, but she had her fair share of experiences with pilots who thought to catch their enemies with an unexpected melee strike. It came with the lack of experience.

Her luck was all used, however, as the rest of the Windams, rather than stay in position, scattered, leaving her to streak through their formation harmlessly. It was a textbook move; Seryes couldn't help but get caught in it, as her direction and speed had already dictated the outcome for her, but she still cursed as the other Jet Windams opened fire.

Her own unit twisted its body in time to place its shield in front again, the barrage of high-energy shots pounding her unit through their air. She barely managed to disengage from the firefight, the engines of her Windams already long pass their stress points, yet still pushing out every ounce of power they could muster.

As the Windams angled their vectors to chase her, she stole a glance at the tactical map; her plan had worked perfectly, as the Jet Dagger Ls, already at a technological disadvantage, were of no match against the coordinated actions of her own units; they had outmanoeuvred the enemy in close range, leaving them to chase one or two baiting units at a time, while a third snuck up from behind to place shots squarely into their back. With the Jet Dagger Ls being pushed, she could expect a 50% casualty rate before the enemy's own Jet Windams caught up and forced them to disengage.

Missile alerts brought Seryes back to her own battle as her aggressors unleashed a flight of missiles, the self-guiding munitions streaking through their air like wolves at the hunt. Turning her unit around, a quartet of muzzle flashes lighted up the front of her mobile suit, all four CIWS guns blazing as they covered the air with the explosions of several missiles. Seconds later, ports in her mobile suit's shoulder armor opened, spitting flares into the air, as her unit dived backwards, leaving the remaining missiles to chase the decoys. She had barely made it on time; green lances slashed through the air, the Windams chasing her having opened fire with everything they had.

The enemy was intent on keeping her as close to the ground as possible. A sound tactic that would severely reduces her chances of manoeuvring. And, judging by how they were leading their shots, collateral damage didn't seem to be their concern. Whether by orders or personal willingness, she couldn't say.

As Seryes' Jet Windam darted around the rain of green death, closing distance with the ground with every second, the only comfort she had was that the area appeared to be relatively empty. Still, the residents were going to get a rude shock when their returned from the shelters.

Seryes' Jet Windam plowed straight into a shower of debris, a beam in front having hit a house; the pressure wave from the high-energy shot had blown most of the wood and plaster off the structure's bracings, and the wind pressure from her own mobile suit's passing had all but torn off everything on the second level of the house. Seryes was now skirting the ground, the land around her being gouged into by her pursuers.

Still, she remained calm enough to plot her next move, her mind ignoring an alert notifying that one of her squadron members had just been shot down. Leading the enemy towards the city proper was out of the question; she couldn't help collateral damage, but she wasn't about to become the direct cause of more of it. Her Jet Windam slowed down just barely to kick off hard, once, and her mobile suit was soaring into the skies, the vapour waves of a sonic boom washing off the mobile suit as it hit its maximum speed, straining against gravity to achieve a lead on its opponents. For the briefest moment, she nearly crashed into something passing her by; it was an attack VTOL, moments later shattered by a beam shot. Around her were the vapour trails of aerial mobile suits and aircraft. She hadn't noticed that the fight had shifted position.

Her pursuers scattered as two Jet Windams struck from the side, their shots claiming another unit. Carl Turon and his wingmate slotted into position on each side of Seryes' unit, carbon scoring visible on their mobile suits.

"Sorry, Leader," Carl said. "There were simply too many to keep them confused for long."

"I guessed as much," Seryes said, checking the unit roster. Thunder Seven, a 2nd Lieutenant Oron, was listed KIA, the loss of his unit confirmed. "This is Thunder Leader to all units! Claim your last targets, then regroup on my position!"

Six acknowledgement lights flickered, and from the mess of smoke trails six Jet Windams sped out, behind them an assortment of enemy Windams, Jet Dagger Ls, and gunships.

Seryes considered her options for a moment, before speaking out on the combined channel. "Thunder Two, switch out your position with Thunder Four and lead the formation. We're going to cut them down into size with the Cockscrew Turn."

"Roger," Carl said, his Jet Windam peeling off from the formation. "Thunder Two to Thunder Six, you're in charge of the second formation."

The nine Jet Windams wavered in their directions for a moment, before seemingly scattering in random directions. From her rear viewcam, Seryes could see the enemy split its forces accordingly.

They had taken the bait.

Seryes, with two of her Jet Windams following loosely behind her, turned in a downward loop before angling upwards, bringing their view to that of the underbelly of the enemy formations. She could see where they were heading to in their chase for her units; one was accelerating straight, one more had plunged downwards after her own formation, and the other was vectoring upwards, towards the sky.

_Perfect_. Seryes licked her drying lips in anticipation, one corner of her mouth twitching in a slight grin, as she gunned for the enemy formation closest to her. Her own chasers would have to go through the same gravity as she did, and had failed to consider their approach to accommodate for her tactics. Had she really ordered a general retreat, they would have been right to chase as they were, but as things stood, they would never be able to catch up in time.

The sky erupted in flames as beams tore into the first enemy formation from below, shredding a Jet Windam and Dagger L. Seryes' own subordinates pulled a tight turn, and with Patricia leading, they crushed the first enemy formation; two Dagger Ls, two Windams, and six gunships.

Seryes's pursuers certainly had not expected to become the hunted. The mobile suits of the _Thunder Swords_ squadron plunged down amongst them, breaking the enemy formation apart.

There were more of them this time, however, and there was a slight difference; Seryes swore that most of the enemy units were targeting her. For the first time since the battle began, she was forced to draw her beam sabre, swinging the weapon in a wide arc to chase away an overzealous opponent. Her plans disrupted, Seryes had no choice but to swallow the fact that her formation was broken; the last three pilots of her flight would have to deal with the enemies themselves, while Seryes led her units in fighting their way out of this tangle.

They were definitely more coordinated, more war-hardened; Seryes saw another of her units drop from the skies, the Jet Windam a flaming husk, as its opponent pulled its beam sabre out of its frame. Without hesitation, Seryes gunned for the new target; an opponent with the gall to engage in aerial melee combat was not an opponent to be taken lightly, and she wanted to make sure she could keep that opponent focused on her while her own squadron wrapped things up.

Their blows were quick, precise, and deadly; Seryes and her opponent exchanged sabre strikes in quick succession, the engines and thrusters of their Windams flaring in quick succession to propel their mobile suits in the actions their pilots demanded of them. Another Jet Windam approached from behind her; without sparing a thought, she threw her beam rifle backwards. Pushing against her first opponent's shield, she forced him backwards, and just as the second mobile suit rushed in, she folded the wings of her Windam's flight pack. The remaining rocket thrusters on her unit flared, and she struck the enemy with a left shoulder blow; grabbing onto the enemy unit with her mobile suit's right arm, she smashed her shield into the Windam's torso, pushing the blade of her beam saber into its frame. The mobile suit went limp and slipped from her unit's grasp, falling to the ground below, and she drew a second beam sabre, preparing to return to her first opponent.

She certainly didn't expect a beam shot to smash into the back of her unit, tearing most of the Jet Windam's lower body off in a single strike. Before she could react, a second shot blasted most of her unit's right arm and engine into slag.

Briefly, her mind registered the possibility that her pilots might actually be less skilled than the remainder of their opponents; now that the numbers advantage had been reduced, it made sense that those remaining were tougher fighters than the ones before, and could not be easily kept off her for long. Her mind refocused on more important matters, shelving the redundant thoughts aside. She would have time for that later. If she survived.

With such damage, it was a miracle that she hadn't suffered any shrapnel damage yet. Having to deal with a falling Windam, however, was not a better situation by any stretch of the word. The Jet Windam's left engine could not hope to break its momentum, and to activate the left thruster was to invite her unit to enter an uncontrolled spin into hell.

"Thunder Leader!" Patricia yelled, her unit putting into a diving motion.

"Idiot!" Seryes said, forgoing radio regulations in the heat of the moment. "Watch your back!"

Patricia's Jet Windam barely dodged a beam rifle shot that streaked close enough to Seryes' unit to rock the mangled frame. At her altitude, to eject was to risk much worse than a broken leg, and the air was thick with bullets and beam shots; losing her parachute would be as good a death sentence as any, and she didn't put it pass the bastards to not leave her alone if she ejected. Seryes gritted her teeth, and pushed the remaining engine on her Windam to its maximum output.

The dying mobile suit shot forward, the ground rushing up to meet it, the ailerons of its one remaining wing struggling to ease its approach vector into something less steep. It was a crazy manoeuvre that she was about to attempt; her choices weren't many, and she didn't have the time to pick a more luxurious option.

Seryes grinned despite herself, a lopsided affair that twisted only one side of her face in a gesture that only a person who had accepted the fact of their life-or-death situation could manage. This would become her new tale to tell around the bar if she could survive it.

Seconds before the grassy ground rushed up to meet her, she pulled the emergency release for the Jet Windam's backpack unit. The engine rocketed forward, leaving the main body to hit the ground.

At the last moment, Seryes' Jet Windam slammed its remaining arm into the ground, as through to push off. As expected, the impact tore off the arm with nary a reduction in speed, and Seryes closed her eyes, her world a whirling hell as the mangled torso of her Jet Windam bounced across the ground, before gouging a deep furrow into the grass, thick black smoke obscuring all those in the sky from the final moments of her descent.

**CE 74 February 19****th****, over Baltimore, North America, Atlantic Federation**

**16 44**

The first thing Seryes noted, when she woke, was the pounding headache. The second was the general stiffness encasing her body. She felt like an entombed corpse swathed in preserving cloths.

Her eyes snapped open, and Lieutenant Edward Carren's face filled her vision. The sounds of a rotor blade, and the choppy movements of her surroundings, told her that she was being airlifted somewhere.

"Welcome back, Captain," Carl said, his poker face failing to hide the relief evident in his eyes. "You're being flown to Walter Reed National Military Medical Centre for advanced treatment."

Seryes's voice was hoarse as she struggled to put her thoughts in order. "What happened to me? What happened after?"

"You've got a fractured spine; it's serious, but they've managed to get it straightened, and it'll heal in time. A lot of time. That adds to the fifteen fractures throughout your body, a minor concussion, moderate skull fracture, and some impact bruising. No shrapnel damage, luckily, since you purged the flight pack before hitting the ground."

Edward's eyes then took on a downcast look. "We lost four pilots in total before the Air Force's Spearhead squadrons came to reinforce us; Zand, Oron, Arthur, and Merisa. We have two more injured; Claire and Reonard. They say that Claire might not be able to return to duty." He let out a sigh. "The other squadrons didn't fare much better, and the same is true for the other units across the nation. The Atlantic Fleet has left our waters; they're en-route to Heaven's Base as we speak, with a full three divisions of manpower and equipment in their holds. Not including the forty-seven warships and another thirty-six support craft."

Seryes closed her eyes again and let her breath out. "It's been a confusing day. Was it a coup d'état after all?"

"Not really," Edward replied. "Apparently, from reports filtering down the ranks, this is tied in to Blue Cosmos and the Logos, and their supporters secreted within our ranks. It seems like Durandal's announcement incited mob actions across the world, and the Atlantic Federation was actually on the verge of denouncing Blue Cosmos' presence; the announcement merely forced their hand to strike before we did."

"The Federation went ahead with the denouncement anyways, at one this afternoon. Now it appears that the remaining Blue Cosmos and Logos forces are gathering from around the world to Heaven's Base. Some of our forces have also defected and have joined ZAFT as auxiliaries, cutting short any attempts on our side to chase them, but most of them were from the Republic of East Asia and the Eurasian Federation." Edward sighed. "We're not in any better shape, however. We lost a lot of good people in this short tussle."

"So we can't even clean our own asses?" Seryes chuckled mirthlessly, her bitter tone giving way to a grimace of pain seconds later. "Damn."

"As far as we're concerned, commander, we're done," Edward said. "Now all we can do is sit back and make sure that we're not going to overextend ourselves again." He was silent for a moment, before turning to Seryes again. "Still, that was an impressive escape manoeuvre, ma'am."

Captain Seryes Halland managed a lopsided grin, one that was skirting the edge of a completely arrogant countenance, a completely mismatched expression set on her otherwise serious countenance.

It was a habitual facial expression she had carried for some time, and one that those in her former squadron, the 65th Advanced Armor Tactics Operational Evaluation Battalion _Aggressors_, would know well, as proof of the daredevil streak hidden under her calm and poker-faced exterior.

"I was one of the original pilots who pioneered the Atlantic Federation's instruction manual on aerial battle tactics with mobile suits," Seryes remarked, her voice thick with practiced indifference. "There's no way I'm going to be beat at my own game that easily."

**CE 74 February 20****th****, ****Bureau of Intelligence****, Washington, North America, Atlantic Federation**

**14 03**

Lieutenant-Colonel March Cornerstone sat heavily into his office chair, the furniture creaking in response to the sudden impact. Arrayed on his table were no less than four dozen reports of the previous day's happenings, the thinnest of them being thirty pages long. Each one of them was a record of the engagements that had erupted across the nation yesterday. As one of the ringleaders of the Atlantic Federation military's clandestine efforts to purge radical elements from its command structure, including Blue Cosmos supporters, his comrades had happily dumped as much as they could onto him, now that the action was over.

Thankfully, there had been no drawn-out siege battles, but the conflicts had been brutal. Blue Cosmos forces had fought hard against Atlantic Federation units; it was as though they had no concept of nation left within them.

Gilbert Durandal, the Chairman of the PLANTs' governing council, had announced just yesterday his plans to seek out the shadowy organization known as Logos, and to deliver his judgement upon them. He had railed against the injustice of their machinations, and had called those of like mind to his side.

March had not expected such a setback to come from Durandal, of all people. The announcement had drawn ire from many OMNI personnel, most of them from the Republic of East Asia and the Eurasian Federation, who had proceeded to desert their original postings, bringing with them their equipment and materials to the nearest ZAFT port. For all intents and purposes, March could consider them lost to the enemy.

The Atlantic Federation had not fared much better from the announcement. Apart from the unfortunate implications that came with being associated with Logos via Blue Cosmos infiltration of their government and military structures, nearly a full third of the Atlantic Federation's military had split from the main forces, bringing their war potential to Heaven's Base, where his agents had reported seemed to be the gathering place for the remainder of Blue Cosmos forces and their allied parties. Presumably, the Logos would be there as well.

The second third of the Atlantic Federation military had been expended in trying to keep the initial third from leaving the nation, and was now licking their hard-earned wounds. Both sides had suffered losses, and with only one third of the Atlantic war machine ready to fight, March was sure that the military leaders left behind would have no mind to pursue the enemy to Heaven's Base. Space forces notwithstanding, their terrestrial forces were in shambles.

With all the losses and defections, OMNI was now severely under-strength. It barely existed as an organization, let alone a fighting force, and the tattered remains of the Eurasian and Atlantic Federation militaries were all that kept it from being dissolved. Excluding regional defence forces, the other OMNI member nations were as good as out of the fight.

He had been so close. March was ready to expose Blue Cosmos to the military council, to order a complete wipe of all aligned members and their affiliates. Durandal's announcement not only completely destroyed his plans for a stronger Atlantic Federation, it also set the Atlantic Federation back in its fighting strength, stripping them of much-needed manpower and material. They would need at least a few good years of peace and quiet to recover from this schism. At the very least, they would need to cease their conflict immediately, and enter a ceasefire with ZAFT. They could no longer afford to remain on a war footing; it would bankrupt the nation within a month. And that was without considering the strain their forces would have to endure. They simply lacked the manpower to continue fighting any longer.

_If Gilbert Durandal had somehow planned for all this to happen, to solidify support for his policies here on Earth, _March thought, _then he would have to be a bastard of the highest order_.

Three separate battles at New York. An air battle over Washington. The defence of Atlantic City. New Belford. Baltimore. Warwick. Even Halifax, at Nova Scotia. Those were just the reports that March could see were on the table. Buried underneath were the rest.

March Cornerstone rubbed the bridge of his nose. It was going to be a long day at the headquarter building for the Atlantic Federation's Bureau of Intelligence.

**Afterword:**

_This was one of the chapters I've always wanted to do; the fallout of the split in the OMNI forces after Durandal announces the existence of the Logos. I gave it my best shot, but it seems to have ended up as a personal experience rather than the world-encompassing feeling I wanted to give the readers. It's a situation rife with the opportunity for some really cool concepts, but ultimately, that wasn't the focus of Destiny._


	33. Chapter 33: Sins of the Father

_**Author's Note:**_

_This fanfic is to write upon some of the events in Gundam SEED and SEED Destiny that are not touched upon or mentioned in-series, but their dates are listed on GundamWikia and are thus treated as part of canon. They are therefore based upon actual happenings in the Cosmic Era universe, but the events within them are open to interpretation. This fanfic is also an attempt at showcasing a "what-if" of all sides involved in the wars, and how some of the events within the show might have come to be._

_Because there are no set dates within the SEED Destiny series, the dates here are displayed only for approximation of the events' chronological placing to the end of the Second Bloody Valentine War, and are not indicative of the exact timeframes of any events that occur in SEED Destiny._

**Gundam SEED: Tales of the Cosmic Era**

**Chapter 33: Sins of the Father**

**CE 74 April 30****th****, Eastern Sector, National Naval Zone, Orb Union**

**13 27**

2nd Lieutenant Rikaku Natsume, of the Orb Union Air Guard's Third Air Defence Regiment, 227th Armor Tactics Squadron, clenched her teeth, as her MVF-M11C Murasame entered a tight overhead turn, the G-forces pushing her into the pilot seat, narrowing her vision into a fraction of its area, hiding the explosions that decorated the skies from her sight. She felt the seat restrains tighten themselves to keep her body secured, and struggled to keep her mind focused on the task at hand; avoiding the gunfire of a ZAFT Forces GOUF Ignited currently on her tail.

The current battle over Orb's skies was her first actual combat experience. While she had scored well enough in the pilot academy to graduate with a posting to one of the newer MS squadrons formed after the war, she had no experience beyond being in the simulator.

And in the simulator, people didn't die from having their mobile suits mangled by a multitude of beam shots.

Her Murasame, a variable-form mobile suit, was currently in aircraft mode, its forward-swept wings and vectoring thrusters the only thing allowing her to keep up with the GOUF Ignited's far-superior close-range manoeuvrability. Struggling to think ahead, Natsume reached for a lever located her her right arm, and pulled on it as hard as she could.

The impact that followed jarred her to the bone and made the G-forces from her previous maneuver seem like a walk in the park. The Murasame's frame locks opened, transforming the aircraft into a humanoid mobile suit; its arms folded out, and its legs snapped back into bipedal position. New locks slid into place as the Murasame figuratively unfolded in mid-air, a shockwave of air manifesting around the mobile suit as its speed dropped sharply. One arm grabbed the shield from its nosecone position, allowing the cockpit to fold back into the mobile suit's torso and revealing its head.

What the Murasame lost in acceleration, it now gained in manoeuvrability. Flipping over to face the GOUF Ignited with ease, Natsume took aim and fired, the Murasame's beam rifle spitting out three shots in quick succession. With her shield held up front, she let the mobile suit drop through the air, pass the GOUF Ignited, and under her target.

The ZAFT unit, however, was unfazed, dancing its way through her opening salvo, its gun arm still tracking her unit. It easily kept pace with her descent, and Natsume clenched her teeth as she pushed the lever in with a jolting action, letting the system pull the Murasame's limbs and equipment together, arranging them into the form of an aircraft. Engines roaring, Natsume bit back the urge to hurl, and her Murasame took off towards the ocean surface, facing the main island, where the Orb Naval Fleet was arrayed in force against the ZAFT submarines some distance back.

The very air was thick with anti-aircraft fire and missile trails, as the local Orb forces fought desperately to keep their section of the defence line intact. A few hours ago, ZAFT had levied an accusation of the Orb government harbouring escaped elements of the war-mongering organization, Logos, within their country, and had requested that they be handed over to the ZAFT forces.

Natsume wasn't there to witness the press exchange between the politicians, but what shocked her was the speed at which ZAFT had deployed their forces. While they had come armed for war, she hadn't really expected them to resort to force so quickly; not since Chairman Durandal's announcement about Logos. From her point of view, it was an action unbecoming of a man who preached international cooperation.

To top things off, it was apparent to her that there was a communication error going on; in her brief flight over the main island, the civilian population had yet to be evacuated to their shelters. It nagged at Natsume's mind; even during the First Bloody Valentine War, when the national systems of Orb were taxed to their breaking point, they had never been this inefficient. Something was wrong.

Pushing redundant thoughts out of her mind, Natsume transformed her Murasame again, this time presenting a shielded front accompanied by a backdrop of allied anti-air as it changed its facing direction, quickly bringing its beam rifle to bear on its front. The GOUF, not to be cowed, dodged the few bursts of CIWS fire from the ships' overtaxed guns that came its way, and lashed out with its superheated whip, the impact carving black anti-beam coating from the shield, leaving a streak of alloy silver on its surface.

The Murasame's altitude controls briefly struggled to prevent itself from being knocked out of control, and Natsume braced for the follow-up blow, all the while struggling to get a target lock on the agile enemy. To her surprise, she saw the GOUF hesitate; a second later it was gone, but not because of the sparse anti-air or any attempts at fighting back on Natsume's side. Beams slashed in from the GOUF's right side, forcing the ZAFT mobile suit to break off and accelerate back into the skies.

Another Murasame slid into position beside Natsume's, its body unfolding into its mobile suit form, with none of the jerky movements Natsume had been told was characteristic of her inexperienced maneuvers. Captain Kawahaku Maeda's unit was flecked with bits of machine oil and plasma scars, proof of the close fights he'd been in since the battle began. Behind him, five more Murasame streaked overhead, plunging into the forefront of the ZAFT aerial forces with the all the ferocity of hunting eagles. Natsume recognized them as the machines of her squadron mates.

The two Murasame established a radio link, Maeda's face appearing in a video feed on her HUD. "Scythe Six, what happened to the rest of Second Flight?"

Natsume shook her head. "I got separated from the flight in an earlier engagement. I haven't heard from any of them since then."

Despite being practically told that half his squadron was now unaccounted for, Maeda didn't miss a beat. "Scythe Two can lead them, and I've set Scythe Three on flight command for the rest. You'll be my direct second now, so stay close. We're going to reinforce the third defensive line, up front. Take care not to make any amateur mistakes."

"Roger," Natsume answered, enduring a brief sense of vertigo as her mobile suit folded back into its aircraft mode. Beside her, Maeda's Murasame did the same, and the two fighters rocketed into the sky, leaving the overburdened Orb naval fleet behind. As they approached the frontline again, Natsume fought to keep her trepidation under control. GOUFs and DINNs battled it out with Shrike Astrays, and further away, a handful of Murasame units; it was a painful reminder of how thinly their forces were stretched. With ZAFT hitting them from the northern and eastern ends of their territory, they were hard-pressed to keep mobile suits from overrunning their defence lines. Already the comms were saturated with reports of breaches in the defence line on the eastern side, ZAFT's other avenue of attack.

"This is Scythe Leader to Gladius Leader, we're en route to your position. Maintain present position."

The two Murasame zipped towards a formation of Astray Shrikes, the Orb mobile suits clearly outclassed by a flight of four GOUFs chipping away at their defences. Already, the rising smoke from three rapidly-sinking metal carcases in the roiling waters told of how beleaguered their situation was.

"Finally!" Gladius Leader replied. "Are you here to relieve our position?"

"Unfortunately not," Maeda replied, banking his Murasame towards the GOUFs, Natsume doing her best to follow behind. "We've got orders to secure this airspace against possible ZAFT pushes."

"I see" Gladius Leader replied. "Still, sticking a squadron of Shrikes out here… it's like offering us up to the enemy."

Natsume wasn't one to disparage her countrymen, but compared to her Murasame, the Astray Shrikes were barely fit for air-to-air combat. Rotor fans allowed them to hover without eating fuel, and their backpack thrusters had enough power to achieve a decent speed, but it was the cumbersome arrangement and lack of sudden acceleration strength in the rotors that made it impossible for the Astray Shrike to pull off any decent air-to-air manoeuvres. The Shrikes would lose a close match in a one-on-one with a Jet Dagger L, to say nothing of a ZAFT DINN or GOUF, or any of OMNI's other aerial mobile suits.

Closer, Natsume could see how the Shrikes were keeping it together by virtue of numbers, gathering into a defensive formation to keep the GOUFs dodging with aimed shots. That was barely enough, however, and another Astray Shrike fell out of the air, mainframe smoking from multiple shots taken.

The GOUFs, now having noticed their approach, split their forces to take on the two incoming Murasame. Maeda's fighter banked left, away from the Astray formation, with Natsume following close behind, as the two aerial fighters vectored hard to meet their opponents head-on.

"I see something else," Maeda remarked. "Looks like they're trying to slip some BABIs under our radar."

Sure enough, Natsume could see three surfaced submarines further out, launching aerial mobile suits into the air, the stocky frame letting her easily identify the newest ZAFT flying unit. The BABI was heavier, more well-armoured, and was clearly meant for demolishing targets in close air support rather than secure air superiority; in a pinch, however, Natsume didn't doubt that they could double as air-to-air combatants as well. Well-armed at long and mid-ranged combat, they were easily a match for a Murasame under the right conditions.

Two of the GOUFs charged the Murasame, one of them swinging a heated whip rod around, the other hanging back to shower them with beam shots from both arm cannons. Natsume and Maeda evaded in different directions, and before Natsume could even react, Maeda had already transformed his Murasame into mobile suit mode, its arm snapping up its beam rifle to direct shots at the GOUF. His direction hadn't changed; his blind shots kept the other GOUF from doubling back while he went for the fire support unit, his shield unit alight with beam shots splashing harmlessly upon it. The GOUF's guns traded firepower for sheer volume, allowing him to take the shots without worrying about his shield shattering.

Even with her inexperience, Natsume could tell that Maeda was relying on her to keep the other opponent from approaching. Turning, her Murasame angled towards the forward GOUF with its whip rod out, flying diagonally downwards in a tight turn as she brought the GOUF within target lock, seeking to take it while it was still somewhat occupied with her squadron leader.

Natsume felt a dull vibration as one of the Type-66A _Hayate_ anti-air missiles on her Murasame's wing detached, falling freely for a moment before its rocket motor ignited, and propelled it forward at killing speed. As expected, the GOUF turned to intercept the missile, one arm spewing beam shots at the guided munition, leaving Natsume free to bring the mobile suit into her sights, her beam rifle firing.

The missile exploded midair, while her beam shot found its mark, the blast searing through the GOUF's right leg armour and joint. Off-balance, the ZAFT unit was unable to bring its whip to bear, nor draw its beam sword, as Natsume transformed her fighter in a swift motion and drew the Murasame's beam sabre, cutting into her opponent before it could stabilize itself.

The ruined halves of the GOUF dropped to the ground, Maeda having finished off his opponent before Natsume had claimed hers. Below them, the Astray Shrikes struggled to land a hit on the two remaining GOUFs. "Scythe Leader to Gladius, intercept those BABI skirting under us," Maeda said, his Murasame already in fighter form and streaking towards the GOUFs. "Leave the air duties to us."

The Astray Shrikes pulled away, down towards the BABIs skirting the ocean's surface. "Roger, Scythe Leader."

The first GOUF quickly raised its shield to block Maeda's shot, the energy beam washing over the equipment. The next moment, the Murasame had transformed, planting a foot into the GOUF and kicking off hard, sending the ZAFT units spiralling out of control, where it barely dodged a second shot. Natsume and her own opponent were engaged in a close-range gunfight, the two units circling each other, exchanging shots as they probed each other's defences.

The BABIs pulled away from the Astray Shrikes, making their mission clear; they were there to engage forces on the Orb mainland, and not over the waters of the Union. One of the BABIs took a hit and crashed into the ocean, the impact tossing the remains of the mobile suit far and wide, but the rest pulled away, their powerful engines making light of the pursuing Shrikes as they made for the shores.

"Damn," Gladius Leader said. "They're going to hit the fleet at this rate!"

"Leave them," Maeda replied. "The fleet can handle themselves. We've got to clear this area of air-superiority unit-"

Maeda's words were lost to the background as a loud alarm in Natsume's helmet blared, the screens pointing towards the ocean surface. Before she could react, a ZAFT _Vosgulov_-class battle submarine broke the surface, right under their position, white waves washing off its massive sea-green hull.

The air filled with displaced vapour, and Natsume's contact alarm changed to one of target locks as the behemoth's anti-air missile launchers opened up, filling the air with guided warheads seconds later.

Its three top hangar ports opened up almost at the same time, and smoke poured from them for the briefest of moments before they launched their load; four Guul flyers shot into the air, the machines' automatic flight programs taking hold as they circled the top of the submarine. Then came the mobile suits; two GOUFs, and four ZAKU Phantoms of various variants. All of them were painted in dark grey, with red outlines; in Natsume's subconcious, the word "demonic" kept appearing.

Natsume's eye caught on the lead GOUF, even as she pulled her Murasame away in evasive manoeuvres, her machine dropping chaff cloud dispensers like no tomorrow in order to shake off the approaching missiles. It was significantly different, with what appeared to be an attached gripping vice on its left arm in place of the shield, and a lack of arm-mounted beam cannons, remedied by its left arm holding a ZAKU's beam rifle.

The GOUF pulled something out from its back, and Natsume almost stopped moving at the sight, had she not been in combat trying to avoid a swarm of missiles. A large spiked mace came away, and as she watched, still transfixed at the sight, the GOUF accelerated towards her and swung its weapon once; the mace came a second later, a terrifyingly fast wrecking ball of destruction that barely missed Natsume's Murasame as she rolled her unit to its right, her machine's manoeuvrability having just barely been enough to dodge the free-swinging mace.

The Orb mobile suit jerked moments later as a beam rifle shot struck its left leg, destroying the engine within, the mobile suit partially engulfed in a plume of flame. Natsume barely had a second to react, a gasp of surprise on her lips, before the GOUF swung again, and the mace came back.

Maeda had just avoided being swarmed by his share of missiles, turning back in time to watch Natsume's Murasame come apart at its joints as a large metal sphere smashed into it, demolishing the mobile suit like a child would kick down a castle made of simple building blocks, scattering the aerial mobile suit in a literal hail of mechanical parts.

"Scythe Six! Respond!"

Natsume's line remained silent, her machine's black box broadcasting a critical error message; the heavily-armored recording device had been heavily damaged by the hit that had claimed the machine it was installed on. Around him, four ZAKU variants on Guul flyers charged him and the approaching Astray Shrike squadron behind him.

Maeda bit his lower lip in frustration as he put the Murasame into a steep climb, aiming to put distance between him and his opponents. A sharp tug, however, confirmed his worst fears; one of the GOUFs, in a dark-grey and red color scheme, but missing the unique modifications of the unit that took out Natsume's Murasame, had caught up before he could accelerate, and had grappled onto his unit's right leg with its left arm whip. He barely transformed in time to reach for his beam sabre, but the GOUF, rather than electrify him, pulled him close, its beam sword held in one hand.

The following impact nearly shook Maeda senseless; the GOUF had brought its beam sword in a horizontal sweep, the power behind the simple blow nearly crashing through the Murasame's shield. It was then that the GOUF reached back and delivered a blow to the Murasame's torso with its shield, and moments later, a burst of beam fire shredded the cockpit block into a glowing mess of melted alloys. Maeda had a brief moment to notice the emblem on the GOUF Ignited's shoulder, just enough time to realize that he was facing a member of the ZAFT Deep Strike Corps, before his vision was awash in light for one last time.

Alan Reidr watched as the second Murasame fell into the sea, decorating the water surface with its ruined carcasses. Beside him was Grace Sakerfield in her GOUF Ignited, and around him, the remaining ZAFT forces, arriving to reinforce the Raider Team, went about destroying the last of Orb's resistance at this point in the front. Behind him, four more submarines surfaced, their launch rails ready to deploy more mobile suits for the assault on the mainland.

"Weak," Grace said, watching impassively as the rest of the Astray Shrikes fell under the ZAFT forces in seconds. "I can't believe they had the gall to not hand over Djibril to us."

"So do many men pay for the hubris of a few," Alan muttered. "Raider Leader to _Mithril Sword_, thanks for your help. We'll be taking it from here."

"No problems, Raider Leader. Beat the arrogant bastards down for us."

Alan turned his gaze towards the Orb Union, pillars of smoke already rising from the initial bombardments. Already reinforcements were approaching his position, the few Murasame amongst them painfully visible from the slower group of Astray Shrikes. His GOUF Crusher started forward, already swinging its heavy mace in a wide arc.

Once they have Djibril in their grasp, they could finally end the war. And on his veteran's pride, he had no intention of letting one tiny nation's tantrums affect the peace of the world.

**CE 74 April 30****th****, 2****nd****Armoured Division Base, Underground Hangar Complex R-9, Orb Union Onogoro Island**

**14 25**

**Commander Kenroukuen Mei raised her head, an instinctive movement guided by her sense. "They're here." **

**Her subordinate, Captain Hanamori Kyoukou, looked at her flight leader. "What?"**

**Mei's grip tightened, her gaze looking beyond her mobile suit, to the skies that were above their underground hangar. "They're here." She started off at a run, towards her mobile suit, the customized Murasame variant used by the Orb Recon Brigade, the **MVF-M14A Tonbogiri.

The mobile suit's shadow briefly covered Mei as she boarded the unit, its V-fin traded for a single sensor spike, the blue-white colour scheme of her machine, and the merciless gaze of its visage, set into a head unit more angular, more devoid of humanoid nuances, than the traditional GUNDAM-like face of Orb's mobile suits. A long-ranged beam cannon, held in place by a powerful sub-arm, was attached to its back; it was currently folded back, nearly running the length of the mobile suit, but in flight, it would constitute the Tonbogiri's nosecone. Its leg units, rather than the rounded blocks of the Murasame's, were of smoother construction, giving off the appearance of sleek, ceremonial armor. Its shoulder blocks and armour were shaped so that in aircraft mode, it would blend into a more aerodynamic design, giving it a faster top speed.

The key was its wings. Rather than the traditional trapezoidal design of most fighter aircraft, or the Murasame's forward-swept arrangement, the Tonbogiri used a swept-back delta-form with variable wingtips, the result being a sleek fighter than could, in a pinch, out-manoeuvre any opponent by manoeuvring its wing segments for greater aerial control. Combined with its long nosecone, it gave the appearance of a traditional bomber aircraft; however, the Tonbogiri was anything but steady in flight; its developers had seen to it that it was, as one of Mei's comrades had described it, upon her return to the Orb Union, "the twitchiest mother****er in existence".

All of Mei's comrades had already returned from their overseas missions, called back for the defence of their nation. Mei's own trip back had been one of chance. For three years, she had been kept away from her adopted home by both her unique situation, and her duty in the shadows.

No longer. She would not allow Uzumi Nara Atha's past actions to taint the island nation. If there was one sin the man could be truly blamed for, Mei reasoned that his hard-headed attitude and the resultant martyrdom was it.

Had he survived, her mission as an undercover agent in OMNI would have never needed to last so long. Orb would have never joined OMNI in CE 73, under the Atlantic Federation's wing. And most of all, Orb would have never burned for the second time in less than half a decade's time. His passing was what had doomed the nation to its second scouring. His leaving the reins in the hands of untrained hopefuls and scheming fools, in the heat of the moment, was what had invited the flames of war to lick at Orb again.

The overhead launch doors opened, and the frames holding the pair of Tonbogiri rotated to face upwards, the mobile suits' long cannons folding into their nosecone position. Arcs of electricity flickered off the launch rails, and Mei could see the mechanics step back, away from the blast shields that had risen out of the hangar ground to shield the workers. Her mobile suit would be propelled out by magnetic launchers, and will not fire thrusters until she was in the air, but it never hurt to be cautious.

"Sword Leader to Orb main command. The 6th Armored Contingent of the Orb Recon Brigade is on station. Awaiting orders."

The cool voice of the operator replied almost instantly. "Orb Northern Field Command to Sword Leader, we have an open breach at the northern field. Request for immediate reinforcements."

"Roger, Command." Mei replied. "Sword Two, I hope you're ready."

"I'm always ready, commander," Kyoukou replied. "I've been raring to go since you returned." A grin appeared on her face, one of the rare displays of emotion Mei knew her subordinate displayed when around her. "The 6th Squadron is back in business! Time to show up the rest of them."

Mei couldn't help a grin herself. "We'll, you better keep that spirit up," she said. "Where we're going, we're never going have enough of it."

And, as she thought back to the people whom she had led to her sanctuary, people who lad once laid their lives on the line to support her throughout her long undercover duty, she had a second thought.

_Let me show you my answer to your questions._

**CE 74 April 30****th****, ?, ?, ?, ?**

**14 25**

**The man laughed, a deep, sincere laugh that echoed around the room he was in, as he watched the Orb and ZAFT forces battle it out.**

**It had been so simple. Just a small word to the right agent in ZAFT, and now the two remaining viable forces on the planet were at each other's throats. Of course, that had been the truth that he'd dropped; without the conflict, however, he was sure that Djibril would have had a much harder time in escaping. As things stood now, even with Djibril's level of incompetence, the man was sure that he could escape to Luna, to where Requiem was waiting for him.**

**Twice he had undermined Durandal's efforts to preserve the Coordinator race. First was to orchestrate the Junius Seven Drop Incident, to force ZAFT to focus much of their attention on a war front. Then came supporting the Blue Cosmos elements in the Atlantic Federation to make sure that they kept ZAFT occupied. **

**He had then successfully took Mendel and occupied it, while the rest of the world had struggled with each other. ZAFT did come knocking, but with the Logos taking up much of the attention the world had, even Durandal had failed to notice that he was but one of many targets, of a much larger plot against the Coordinators. **

**The man grinned. He had two things in his hands now; one, the cloning technology left behind by Ulen Hibiki. It was imperfect, but it worked. He only needed troops, not people. Two, was the data of the research carried out by Mendel. Even Durandal had only recently learnt of rumours of its importance, and with Mendel closed, he had no way of knowing how it could have changed the fate of the Coordinators. The man had even had some of his own play the part of a large group of space pirates, to keep up the illusion that Mendel had been occupied by a third-party force with goals no more immediate that looting everything that came into sight. Not a threat that can be ignored, eventually, but one that was far less in importance than wiping out the Logos. **

**And by the time anyone came knocking in force, he would be long gone. Long gone to fulfil the work he should have done years ago.**

**The world had been so hungry for a miracle. Few remembered the original team of scientists who had created George Glenn, the first Coordinator; few remembered the roles they had in mind for him, for their work to slowly bring about a new golden age for humanity. Their glory had been pounced upon, forcibly disseminated by their parent organizations. The greed of humankind had made widespread modifications of embryonic cells viable, and in turn, had spawned the Coordinators. And the rest of humanity, unconciously lusting for hope and strength after the humbling experience of the Reconstruction War, had eaten up the lies offered by the medical corporations, of how the modifications could not only alter appearance, but fix illnesses caused by the fallout of the Reconstruction War. **

**True, they did fix the vast majority of genetic illnesses. It was also ironic that most of the people who truly needed the genetic treatments never got them, dying in agony to radiation-induced sicknesses in the Middle East, Western China, and around Africa, while in the cities, children modified and born with the perfect looks and the perfect physique, pushed on by an egotistical society unwilling to hold the lessons of yesterday close to their hearts, begun to start the slide towards the world's currently level of depravity.**

**As humanity had progressed, they also ended up causing the single largest genetic divide in history, by moving from modification of appearances to those of mental and physical attributes. And as one of the man's mentors had speculated long ago, that had created a host of other hidden genetic issues in modern humanity. If left unchecked, the Coordinator's increasing sterility would be the least of all the problems that would arise; the war would end, and genetic modification rates would rise in. They already were, the numbers in African and Asian nations showing signs of an impending Coordinator boom in no more than the next ten years. **

**Durandal's speech had been an excellent diffusing agent for all the pent-up hatred. What made it so dangerous was the fact that he still kept the issue of Coordinator sterility a national secret.**

**No doubt the Coordinators were already working overtime to find a cure, and would ready release a revision to their techniques if they could. What made the man sick to his core, however, despite all of the comparative deeds he had sullied his hands with, was the danger of a "miracle" cure. Often, genetic modifications hastily released to public use had not been fully checked for all of its dangers. If the people were to pounce upon it as they had decades ago, upon the Coordinator modifications, the evolutionary doom that awaited humanity, that would force their last, final generation to die as suffering, unnatural creatures, twisted beyond mortal comprehension by the thoughtless tinkering done to their genes by the people of this age, would make the deaths of both Bloody Valentine Wars pale in comparison.**

**The Naturals sickened him as much as the Coordinators did. The Coordinators, originally intended to be inserted into normal human societies in small numbers to attempt to fix and improve the human gene pool over the course of the next century, had proliferated, and were set upon so readily by the enraged Naturals over the course of the next five years that the man almost wished he was of a different race. **

**But it would all be over soon. He would fix the problems the mega-corporations had engineered, all those decades ago. Logos, Blue Cosmos, the PLANTs, it didn't matter. **

**The only option would be to sweep the table clean and start over. He would bring the human race back in line with the road once laid out for them, with the force his mentors had engineered. The Coordinators would die under the grinding heels of the darkest incarnations of their race, and the Naturals, to a nightmare that even the most fanatic in Blue Cosmos dared not to dream of.**

**And then, finally, he would be able to restart the human race anew.**

**Afterword:**

_It's an Orb viewpoint of the Second Battle of Orb this time around, set at the time before Kira arrived on-scene with the Strike Freedom. I wanted something devoid of the Gundams, since in the show proper, that was what the battle was all about; the Gundams._

_Two stories before the end._


	34. Chapter 34: False Prophet

_**Author's Note:**_

_This fanfic is to write upon some of the events in Gundam SEED and SEED Destiny that are not touched upon or mentioned in-series, but their dates are listed on GundamWikia and are thus treated as part of canon. They are therefore based upon actual happenings in the Cosmic Era universe, but the events within them are open to interpretation. This fanfic is also an attempt at showcasing a "what-if" of all sides involved in the wars, and how some of the events within the show might have come to be._

_Because there are no set dates within the SEED Destiny series, the dates here are displayed only for approximation of the events' chronological placing to the end of the Second Bloody Valentine War, and are not indicative of the exact timeframes of any events that occur in SEED Destiny._

**Gundam SEED: Tales of the Cosmic Era**

**Chapter 34: False Prophet**

**CE 74 August 15****th****, long-distance travel ship **_**Korolev**_**, en route to Mars**

**12 52**

The man sat back and rubbed the bridge of his nose. He needed the lapse in reading to take in the information, to absorb what had been presented on the paper to him.

He set the documents aside, going through the information he had just processed.

"Durandal… what have you done?"

The man looked out of the viewport of the ship, watching the stars in the distance. They were evocative of human souls, the man thought, each of them shining brightly in the distance. It reminded the man of his birth planet, Mars.

Mars. The frontier of humanity. On the partially-terra-formed planet, the colonies of both Naturals and Coordinators were built, allowing the two races to intermingle. Away from the influence of the Earth Sphere, the people of Mars had successfully built a cooperative society, and the bloodlines of both Natural and Coordinator flowed through at least half of the population on the planet.

The man glanced at the papers again. While it had been a while since he had presided over a colony-wide genetic scanning programme, the last he remembered of such an effort was during a bacterial outbreak in CE 69. He still remembered the records from back then, and this new set of information worried him plenty.

Durandal's Destiny Plan. A massive social programme that aimed to segregate people into the roles best served by their inherent genetics. A programme that the man was all too familiar with; it was the norm on most of Mars.

It was his method of execution that worried the man. Durandal's assurance had been that he had nothing but the best intentions for all involved. Yet, less than a day after leaving Aprilius One, the man had received news that ZAFT had used a weapon of mass destruction against the Atlantic Federation for their refusal against the plan.

"Durandal… old friend. What could have changed you so?" The man muttered, to no one in particular; the silence in his room was palpable, and he needed something to break the ominous air that threatened to stifle his thoughts. "When we both split off into our respective fields… what transpired within you?

The words of a young Durandal, almost twenty years ago, echoed in his ears. "There will never be a greater freedom for all living things than to be as they desire. I won't allow the PLANTs to go ahead with their genetic screening programmes! It's a denial of free will!"

The man stood up and grasped the corner of his desk, feeling his grip tighten on the bolted-on fixture. He knew about the genetic screening to pair up the most compatible genes; it was an unfortunate necessity of the Coordinators' increasing sterility as a race. _Was that what pushed him onto this path?_

But the man remained sceptical of the plans Durandal had shown him. His actions had been increasingly militaristic, increasingly heavy-handed. Something must have tipped his hand for this current situation to occur. Something that would have been more than just his personal values being violated.

_We only implemented it for a few select locations, on the frontier, where to work alone meant to die alone_.

The man sat back down, feeling a feeling of tightness, the emotion of unease, grasp at his heart.

_Your nation is located in the cradle of humanity, Gilbert. They are a free people, living in relative comfort. Your countrymen can accept your plans. Will the rest of the Earth Sphere see your needs?_

The void of space offered no answer, only silent lights, as the interplanetary ship continued its solitary journey home.

**CE 74 August 15****th****, Lunar surface**

**14 29**

Tachatsky Velkov put his GOUF Ignited into a backtrack, luring in the lone Murasame. The Orb mobile suit, no doubt an advanced scout, charged him, beam rifle spitting out rounds even as it closed in. Tachatsky could almost see that the Murasame would pull out its beam sabre within the next five seconds, to attempt to close in for a melee kill.

Tachatsky laughed. The pilot was a fool of the highest order to not know that he or she was already in a sea of battlefield jamming. Unfortunately, the Orb pilot would never find out of Tachatsky had been a lone unit as well.

Without waiting to give the pilot a chance to do so, Tachatsky charged his opponent, slamming into the Murasame with all the force his GOUF Ignited's thrusters could output. The mobile suit was thrown back, its pilot no doubt badly shaken from the impact, and Tachatsky focused both multi-barrelled beam guns onto the mobile suit, the rapid-fire shots tearing it apart.

"Hammer Three to Hammer Leader, there are four more enemies coming in on your left!"

Tachatsky focused his sensors on the area, picking up two Dagger Ls and two Windams charging his location, seconds away from entering his weapons range. "Roger than, Hammer Three."

The GOUF Ignited swung its arm forward, the multi-barrelled beam guns spitting green death upon his foes. They scattered, and Tachatsky likewise accelerated, closing in with the first Dagger L.

Even as the GOUF Ignited's right arm extended its whip to catch the hapless mobile suit by its leg, its shield ejected its beam sword; Tachatsky took it up with the mobile suit's left hand, and the GOUF Ignited pulled the Dagger L close with a swift tug. Unable to stop, the Dagger L could only flail futilely as Tachatsky impaled the OMNI mobile suit on its torso.

Whirling around, Tachatsky flung the corpse towards the two approaching Windams, his right arm now free, and its multi-barrelled beam guns keeping the other Dagger L at bay. The Windams dodged the now-silent Dagger L with ease and approached him, beam sabres and rifles both active as they closed their distance.

Tachatsky danced his way around their shots, making for the Windam closest to him. The OMNI mobile suit thrust its left arm, holding its beam sabre, at him, its rifle held with its right hand, at the hip, so that the left-mounted shield could hide it from view. Tachatsky felt his excitement soar for a moment as he deflected the melee blow and narrowly dodged the surprise attack; the green beam lanced into space, and before the Windam could recover, the GOUF Ignited blew its torso apart with a burst of beam shots from its right arm.

The second Windam charged Tachatsky, and the GOUF's left arm let go of the beam sword even as he raised his shield to block the blow. Catching the drifting weapon with its right arm, the GOUF thrust forward and under his shield, using the same trick as the first Windam had done. The weapon impaled the mobile suit in its torso, as Tachatsky had done to numerous others before it.

Kicking the second, now inert Windam away, Tachatsky was content to watch as the remaining Dagger L fled, only to be intercepted by his squadron member. Hammer Two, Kenneth Freys, snickered as his mobile suit pushed the Dagger L off its beam sword, leaving the metal carcass to drift into the void. "Don't come here if you've got no conviction."

One by one, the members of Hammer Squadron gathered, their position a key entry point into the inner defences of the Messiah Defence Line. Far behind them, the massive space fortress of ZAFT loomed, escort ships and mobile suits moving in concert with it. Bright lights decorated its forward vector as the main forces of Terminal and ZAFT clashed head-to-head.

Tachatsky's squadron was the vanguard of their secondary force, located near the polar vector of Messiah, and behind them, the ZAFT _Laurasia_-class frigate _Imperatus_ moved into position, its hull fresh with scorch marks from its area-defence duties. Tachatsky had a measure of respect for whoever commanded the ship; he or she wasn't afraid to shy away from combat, and the ship had dutifully stood ground when a few of the enemy force had slipped past Tachatsky's squadron.

"The bastards are penetrating our defences from the front," Hammer Three, Wellis Troya, grunted. "Are we still going to remain here?"

The comms crackled, interrupting the ZAFT pilot. "ZAFT Command to all Zone 2B2 units, a new enemy force is approaching your position. Prepare to intercept. Reinforcements will arrive at your zone in 5 minutes. More will follow according to their own schedule."

"I guess not," Tachatsky said, once the line closed. "All units, listen up! It looks like this will be a mixed ZAFT-OMNI force! Target the ZAFT units first; they're the greater threat!"

"Roger!" the replies rolled in, as the GOUF Igniteds and ZAKU variants of Hammer Squadron scattered out once more.

Tachatsky watched the tactical display as the combined ZAFT-OMNI force moved into position, gathering for a major assault against their location. Soon enough, he could make out a _Nazca_-class destroyer, taking the forefront of the battle.

Tachatsky frowned as he spotted the warship's escorts; not only were there GOUF Igniteds and ZAKU Warriors, but there were a pair of Aile Strike Es as well, mixed in with the usual spread of Dagger Ls and Windams. It was not going to be an easy battle.

The enemy broke first, quickly closing distance between the two opposing forces. Even as Tachatsky matched blows with one of the GOUFs, he could see more warships appearing; three _Laurasia_-class frigates, two OMNI _Nelson_-class battleships, and an _Agamemnon_-class carrier, followed by their respective escorts. None were more pressing than the pair of Aile Strike Es that had engaged them, but Tachatsky knew that if they took even minor losses, the enemy would have no trouble steamrolling them. The _Imperatus_, certainly, could not afford to take on the vessels in direct combat. To engage one was to be exposed to the others.

A new voice filtered through the comms, as a group of ZAKUs sped into the zone. To Tachatsky's relief, there were two Gunner ZAKU Warriors mixed in amongst them. "This is Typhoon Squadron! We're on station for assistance!"

"Glad to hear that," Tachatsky replied. "Pick your targets!"

As the bolstered ZAFT defenders sunk their fangs into the attackers, Tachatsky kicked his opponent back, a GOUF Ignited that recovered all too quickly to speed away from Tachatsky, forcing him to give up the chase or be led into a bigger firefight. "All Hammers, reform into element pair. Don't take them alone! Hammer Two, you're on command! Push forward; make them think you're trying to sunder their line. Hammers Five and Nine," he said, calling out to the two closest members, "You're with me. We're going to blind that carrier and lure out the Strikes!"

Two ZAKU Phantoms of different models, their pilots voicing their affirmation, fell in alongside his GOUF Ignited as he sped forth, seeking the elusive OMNI units. Hammer Seven, Kyra Fhorst, piloted a Slash ZAKU Phantom, while Hammer Nine, Ouren Parldon, piloted a Blaze ZAKU Phantom.

One of the enemy's GOUF Ignited reeled back as the three mobile suits crashed through an enemy formation, Kyra taking the chance to sink her Slash ZAKU Phantom's beam polearm into the disoriented mobile suit in a flyby attack. Before they could retaliate, the ZAFT mobile suits were past them, speeding for the ships and the heart of the enemy fleet; the _Agamemnon_-class.

Behind, Kenneth led the remaining Hammers in a frontal assault, keeping the ZAFT traitors from pursuing them; splitting his squad into two, Tachatsky heard Kenneth order William to take a separate group to spread more damage, and to escort Typhoon squadron's anti-ship mobile suits.

Tachatsky turned his attention back to his front, and ground his teeth in annoyance as the sensor readout on his GOUF Ignited flickered; the warning system brought up an alert that his mobile unit had come under enemy jamming. The three mobile suits increased their speed even further, passing under the foremost _Nazca_-class as its turrets tracked the three units, CIWS guns blazing.

Thankfully, the ZAFT traitors had spread their warships in a V-formation, and Tachatsky allowed himself a small sense of relief at the fact that they only had to bypass one warship to escape all of them. With the Hammers and Typhoons bearing down on their line, the ZAFT traitors would be too occupied to help their rearward OMNI allies.

"Oncoming, _Nelson_-class battleships. They're accelerating towards the traitors' formation to provide support fire." Ouren said. "I'm picking up combat datalink signals. They're boosting each other's sensors."

"Stay steady," Tachatsky replied. "Stick to my tail."

As Tachatsky expected, the real-challenge lay in the _Nelson_-class battleships that flanked the carrier. The volume of point-defence fire they put out made it nearly impossible to proceed quickly.

So Tachatsky responded by diving towards the nearest battleship.

With any other squadron, Tachatsky's actions would have elicited incredulity from his squadron members, but he had not picked Kyra and Ouren for nothing. Both of them were some of the more senior members of his squadron, and were familiar with his tactics. While he could not afford to lose both Kenneth and himself in what might be a suicide attack, denying his squadron of all leadership elements, he could still afford to gamble three of their lives.

Tachatsky's GOUF cut it close to the _Nelson_-class' hull, almost scraping the metal that now zoomed past at no more than five meters away. Kyra and Ouren followed, two ZAKU Phantoms following the same path down, the ZAFT pilots' experienced handling of the mobile suits allowing them to eke out every bit of stability and speed they could from the controls.

The next moment, they were past, the three mobile suits with a clear shot towards the enemy carrier. A proclamation from one of Typhoon Squadron's pilots for having sunk a _Laurasia_-class barely registered in Tachatsky's mind, as he aimed for his first target; one of the Dagger Ls guarding the carrier.

The OMNI mobile suit barely got its first shot out as Tachatsky struck with his beam sword, the GOUF's strike shearing the enemy in half as Tachatsky struck it in a first-strike blow. Kyra and Ouren sped forward to take their respective targets, easily destroying the OMNI forces, and the three mobile suits continued their rampage over the escort mobile suits; the _Agamemnon_-class had committed most of its mobile suit assets to the front, and Tachatsky's gamble was now paying off beautifully. The anti-air cover from the _Agamemnon -_class was almost laughable; it was a command vessel, not a warship, and even with the enemy's supporting jamming and anti-air, Tachatsky, Kyra, and Ouren had no trouble demolishing the mobile suits sent at them.

"Easy as pie," Ouren remarked, his Blaze ZAKU Phantom turning from a recently dispatched opponent to fling a beam tomahawk at an approaching Dagger L. Caught unaware, the OMNI unit took the attack in its cockpit block, and was knocked away, the mobile suit now inert.

"We are situated away from the main offensive," Kyra replied, her Slash ZAKU Phantom's beam gatling guns putting up a wall of deadly green, the shots gouging holes into two Dagger Ls too slow to dodge the sweeping fire. "Still, I'd like the chance to lay into Terminal's main forces…"

"If we get the chance," Tachatsky said. "Right now, we'll be content with this."

Both pilots replied with gusto. "Roger!"

The _Agamemnon_-class took its first hit as Kyra and Ouren laid into its flanks with their mobile suits' weapons, moving in the practiced motions of Maneuver Twelve, the Jet Stream Attack. Their blasts targeted the ship's sensitive areas; Ouren's Blaze ZAKU Phantom unleashed its missiles and beam rifle on the bridge, the CIWS turrets, and thrusters, while Kyra's Slash ZAKU Phantom lay into the ship's main guns and engines with her beam polearm with daring close-range attacks, and Tachatsky's GOUF Ignited fired both its beam guns, taking care to target the exposed spots his subordinates had created, the beam shots dealing their full damage without armour to impede their progress. While they lacked the firepower to destroy the ship outright, it was now out of the fight, with no chance of aiding the enemy.

And that was when Tachatsky spotted the Strike Es approaching from behind, returning from the frontline as fast as they could to intercept them. Even as he moved to dodge, the OMNI mobile suits closed in fast enough to engage them in melee combat. Beam sabre clashed against beam sword as the GOUF Ignited and an Aile Strike E locked blade with each other, straining to keep the other party from slipping past the stalemate. From the corner of his eye, Tachatsky could see Kyra and Ouren chasing the second Strike E, beams crisscrossing and thrusters flaring as the heavier ZAFT units sought to keep up with the agile OMNI machine.

Pushing against his opponent, Tachatsky placed some distance between the GOUF Ignited and its adversary; its right arm came up, and the GOUF unleashed a firestorm of beam shots, one that the Strike E barely dodged. Its own beam rifle, held in its left hand, returned fire, forcing Tachatsky to drop his attack in favour of defence. Each impact shook the GOUF Ignited's shield with a heavy blast, its anti-beam coating beginning to burn away rapidly in the face of the OMNI mobile suit's much stronger beam rifle.

Accelerating away, Tachatsky let the OMNI unit chase him before activating the GOUF Ignited's whip. In a single motion, he had an alloy whip wrapped around its shield, and the Tachatsky pulled hard. The whip discharged its electricity at the same time as the GOUF Ignited pulled the shield away, the shock burning out multiple circuits in the Strike E's left arm. Its beam rifle sparked, completely fried by the discharge.

The OMNI mobile suit threw away its ranged weapon, its arm movement visibly slower. Its right arm had its beam sabre held out at ready as it charged the ZAFT unit. Even without a rifle, the Strike E was still a threat; Tachatsky barely avoided a slash, before a thrust forced him to place his shield in front of him. The blow slid off the heavy shield, but before Tachatsky could retaliate, the OMNI unit had planted its foot into the GOUF's torso, sending it back with an explosive front kick. Its thrusters blazed to counteract its momentum; the OMNI unit recovered all too quickly, accelerated towards Tachatsky for a quick kill.

With any other pilot, the OMNI unit might have been skilled enough. Tachatsky, however, still kept his wits around him, unfazed by the impact, and even as he lost the tussle, his GOUF Ignited tumbling away, it raised its sword arm and struck the Strike E with a burst of beam shots at an opportune moment. The OMNI mobile suit was awash in smoke, holds gouged into its armour; Tachatsky's mobile suit was still unharmed, but his opponent was now at a disadvantage, both in firepower, and in manoeuvrability, its response destroyed by the widespread damage across its frame. Tachatsky closed the remaining distance and stabbed deep into the mobile suit's torso with his beam sword, letting it drift into the void, before placing his attention on the second Strike E, which was making its way towards the _Nelson_-class battleships, Kyra and Ouren on its tail.

And that was when the warning alert sounded out in his ears.

This far out, his sensor range was shortened, and his mobile suit had registered an unknown large contact at half the range it should have. To Tachatsky's eyes, it looked like a heavily modified _Nelson_-class, but as his mobile suit struggled to map out its sensor signature, Tachatsky realized, a cold sweat beginning to break out on the back of his neck, that the ship had stealth attributes.

Its side bay doors opened, disgorging its complement of mobile suits. Tachatsky saw a quartet of mobile suits appear; a quartet of Slaughter Daggers, all outfitted with different mission packs.

Tacahtsky suddenly felt a sense of unease. "Hammer Seven! Hammer Nine! Watch your back!"

Even as his words came out, the newcomers opened fire, their weapons targeting the ZAFT units with trained precision. Tachatsky bit back a curse as Ouren, blindsided from below him while chasing the remaining Strike E, was immediately immolated in a burst of multi-phase fire, the Launcher Slaughter Dagger responsible already shifting his aim. Two Slaughter Daggers charged forward; one had an Aile pack, and the other one was outfitted as a Sword Slaughter Dagger.

Kyra yelled in fear as she pulled away from her target, and the second of the two Slaughter Daggers hanging back opened fire from well outside its expected range, taking the Slash ZAKU Phantom in its torso; from the powerful burst of white light, Tachatsky guessed that it wielded a railgun. The ZAFT squadron leader watched the IFF go offline as a chain reaction took his last remaining ally; he gritted his teeth, and held his beam sword at the ready to meet the incoming enemies head on. He had no doubts as to his pursuers' capabilities at catching him.

Tachatsky's vision, however, was momentarily blinded as the modified _Nelson_-class opened fire. He expected a blinding, sustained beam of green from a main cannon, or even the multi-spectrum burst of a Lohengrin cannon, but it was beyond his wildest expectations; the white, sharp flash of an electromagnetic cannon shot, on par with the MR-6 cannons at OMNI's Victoria Base, on Earth, that he once had the fortune to witness during battle.

Tachatsky's blood ran cold as he watched the contact of the _Imperatus_ on his tactical map, situated almost four hundred kilometres behind his position, disappear from the screen two seconds later, replaced with "KIA" in crimson letters. Then the enemies were upon him like a force of nature, the heavy, yet almost impossibly fast horizontal blow of the Sword Slaughter Dagger's anti-ship sword laying his hasty defence open for the Aile Slaughter Dagger to speed into.

Tachatsky gasped, his GOUF Ignited thrusting its beam sword out in a last, desperate manoeuvre, and watched helplessly as his blow split empty space, while the enemy cut deep into the ZAFT mobile suit, burning through electrical cables, skeletal frame parts, and other important components. The cockpit sparked as several panels exploded, and the mobile suit drifted backwards, a deep gouge in its side, its right arm and leg severed, and most of its backpack no longer functioning. Tachatsky took aim at the Aile Slaughter Dagger with the GOUF Ignited's remaining left arm; without even a pause, the Slaughter Dagger fired a point-blank shot with the beam rifle it held in its left hand, destroying the mobile suit's limb with indifference.

Tachatsky, disoriented by the explosions that had rocked the interior of his cockpit, barely noticed ZAFT reinforcements arriving to distract the OMNI newcomers, the red-on-grey mobile suits rushing onto the field, weapons ready. He let out his breath as he reached for sealant patches, painfully aware of several pieces of debris sticking into his arms. Thankfully, those were not serious wounds.

His GOUF Ignited, however, drifted away from the battle, from the heart of his allies, from the defence line he now left behind.

Hitting his inert controls in frustration, pain lancing through his arms, a still-groggy Tachatsky opened the GOUF Ignited's cockpit, and could only watch helplessly at the bright flashes in space, listening to the garbled reports coming in from his mobile suit's failing comm link, as Terminal's forces, in the next few hours, smashed a path through the ZAFT defences.

On that day, ZAFT was defeated at the Battle of Messiah, and Chairman Gilbert Durandal killed in its final minutes. The Destiny Plan died with him, its name grounded into the dirt by the actions of that fateful day.

**CE 74 August 16****th****, long-distance travel ship **_**Korolev**_**, en route to Mars**

**09 24**

"… I see. Thanks."

"No problem, sir," the aide replied, leaving the man alone to his thoughts. He was surprised; he had taken ZAFT's defeat without emotion. His mind was focused solely on the thoughts of the man who had once led the Coordinator nation to the cusp of a new age of peace… and who had given it all up in a bid for dominance. Not just of military, or for economic control… but social dominance.

Durandal's plans were still scattered on his table, the documents outlining his ideals for the future of human society. He had, after reading it multiple times, finally realized why Durandal had such an insistence on the Destiny Plan.

_Gilbert… you know that that kind of plan won't make it through…_

_Yes, the Coordinator gene line might be healed if given three or four generations of exposure to the Natural gene pool. But you barely have a generation left, let alone two. And while you've extended your hands to the Naturals, they will not be so willing to embrace the Coordinators. Not in the numbers you desire or need. And their leaders would never allow you to bring the PLANTs to greater heights if they could help it. Not after what was done to them._

The man blinked, trying to hold back the sudden surge of tears threatening to spill over his cheeks. _You were caught between a rock and a hard place, old friend. The survival prospects of the Coordinators as an entity, as a race, and the warmongering elements that survived the First Bloody Valentine War, that destroyed the fragile schedule of your plans. It will take far too long to forget the scars left behind within this decade. Far too long to save the Coordinators._

He gathered up the papers, sealing them back into the envelope. Looking out of his cabin, the stars shone in the void. His vision blurred, and the specks of light swam in his view, taking on the illusion of a sparkling tapestry set against a void-black cloth.

_Whatever your methods, I, at least, will remember your underlying nobility. Rest in peace, comrade_.

**Afterword:**

_This story deals with the final battle of the series, at Messiah. Like the previous chapter, this is a setup for the main events, so I fell back on using the rank-and-file pilots to showcase their side of the war. Without the total war concept in the previous series, SEED Destiny actually has very little major battles._

_One story before the end._


	35. Chapt 35:Those Who Paved the Broken Path

_**Author's Note:**_

_This fanfic is to write upon some of the events in Gundam SEED and SEED Destiny that are not touched upon or mentioned in-series, but their dates are listed on GundamWikia and are thus treated as part of canon. They are therefore based upon actual happenings in the Cosmic Era universe, but the events within them are open to interpretation. This fanfic is also an attempt at showcasing a "what-if" of all sides involved in the wars, and how some of the events within the show might have come to be._

_Because there are no set dates within the SEED Destiny series, the dates here are displayed only for approximation of the events' chronological placing to the end of the Second Bloody Valentine War, and are not indicative of the exact timeframes of any events that occur in SEED Destiny._

**Gundam SEED: Tales of the Cosmic Era**

**Chapter 35: Those Who Paved the Broken Path**

**CE 74 September 5****th****, Bloody Valentine War Memorial Gravesite **_**Vigilance**_**, south of Medicine Hat, Alberta, United States, Atlantic Federation**

**07 03**

Ray Feric stood in front of the gravestone, a couple of flowers wreathes in hand. It was his first time here since her death. The sun cast its first rays over his face; his eyes blinked behind his shades, his mouth set in a grim line.

He had long avoided this place, deeming himself unworthy of being in the presence of the dead. But it was time he stopped escaping.

It was time he faced his judgement. Whether he could move forward or return back to the hellscape that he had withdrawn into following his rotation out from the USSA War of Independence, it was time to end the voices in his mind once and for all.

He laid a wreath down in front of the gravestone, and started speaking to himself.

"Lin Tennnan-Khole. Service rank of Master Sergeant, posthumously promoted to Petty Officer 1st Class after her death at the Second Battle of Jachin Due, on the 26th of September, during GENESIS' first firing."

His mind struggled to remember all he could about her. "She came from a family of four in Minnesota, leaving behind an elder sister and two parents. She graduated from the Atlantic Federation military's engineering academy in North Dakota in CE 70, and was first posted to the 8th Fleet as a mobile armour technician, as a Crewman 2nd Class. Rising through the ranks, she was one of the original technicians who worked on the G-project, on the miniaturization of beam weapons into MS-capable forms."

His mind walked through the misty passages of memories long-suppressed. He couldn't afford to dredge them back up during the Second Bloody Valentine War. But now, it was time he laid them to rest.

"She was later part of the crew responsible for the production of Moebius units with beam cannons, and was also a project member on the second-generation GUNDAM project. Requesting a change of posting, she was assigned to the Expeditionary Force sent to attack Jachin Due nearing the end of the war. She was last stationed aboard the _Marseille III_-class support vessel _Safe Behind_ as a technician leader."

Ray closed his eyes, trying to bring the full force of his first treasured memory back into his mind's eye. It still hurt, but it no longer stung. Be it her face, her smile, her angry visage, or her concerned look, the last living expression he had seen on her face.

Her blue-frosted lips and glassy eyes, a blank look of surprise, within a shattered helmet, her red-stained spacesuit, with her body broken by the deadly debris of a ship caught in the back-blast of GENESIS.

"Many remembered her as a technical genius, a person with a way with machines. To me, she was a close friend, and an understanding companion. Perhaps more than that, for a while."

Ray was silent for a while. Taking a deep breath, he continued.

"She used to tell me that she had a cousin in the PLANTs. As far as she told me, they maintained regular correspondence until the Battle of Panama, when the Earth Alliance and the PLANTs dissolved all ties and declared strategic war upon each other."

Ray turned silent, staring at the marker for a while. Then, he straightened up.

"Well, this will be a long day of visiting. Bye, Lin. See you again, someday."

Hefting the remaining wreathes, Ray walked down the aisle.

Around him, gravestones stretched as far as the eye could see, partitioned into blocks of two-hundred.

Twenty-five thousand souls were remembered here, a microscopic fraction of the number who died in both wars and in-between. Ray could feel echoes from all across, the howling wind, the cold numbness caressing his face. Each step felt like nothing, and yet his legs were as though weighed down with lead weights.

Far away, he fancied seeing another person walk around the gravestones, laying down wreathes of their own. He stopped in front of one.

"Captain Kelvin Genedan. He was demoted to 2nd Lieutenant upon his death because of charges of treason, later reinstated to Captain, with a posthumous promotion to Major, upon the end of the Second Bloody Valentine War."

His gazed unfocused, Ray thought back to their time at the South American front, the moments spent together, sitting in their mobile suits, or leaning out to take a breather in the damp southern air, chatting with the soldiers of the Alliance.

"He graduated from California's military academy in CE 71, as a mobile armour, and was one of the first few to be selected for mobile suit retraining. Surviving the Bloody Valentine War, he was later assigned to the front during the USSA War of Independence."

He thought back to the operations they had participated in, at the times they had fought back to back. He thought back to their time, later on, at the Advanced Armor Tactics Combat Training Facility at Nova Scotia.

"He had been part of a movement to unmask Blue Cosmos, and to that end was one of their most tireless workers, toiling to bridge the gap under the table, between the loyalist units of the Atlantic Federation military. He died on the 25th of May, CE 73, and left behind his wife, and a son, currently at nine years old, as well as his relatives."

Kelvin's life had ended when military police had come after him, having uncovered a plot to take the Atlantic Federation in a coup d'état. His life had been spared when his name was cleared, but Kelvin was not so lucky; he was one of the top leaders of the circle of plotters, and the MPs, as Ray later found out, came with orders to kill.

"His actions, and the deaths of his truly and his comrades', would slowly wake a spark of flame within the moderates of the Atlantic Federation, prompting them to begin openly opposing Blue Cosmos and Logos agents, restricting the destructive actions of their treacherous agents abroad. Together with ZAFT Chairman Gilbert Durandal's announcement about Logos, it would serve to drive out the cancer of Blue Cosmos from the Atlantic Federation, forcing them to gather at Heaven's Base for a decisive battle."

Ray placed a wreath on the gravestone. He smiled, a faint movement of his lips, a hint of bitterness in his eyes, remembering Kelvin's infectious smile, his hard-set jaw whenever he was determined, his discerning gaze during their long discussions on the state of the Atlantic Federation.

"So long, old friend," Ray said, bumping his right fist against the left front of the gravestone. Instead of the cold, rough touch of the hard stone, Ray fancied feeling warm skin and hearing Kelvin's short but sincere laughter again. "I don't plan on joining you anytime soon. So let me toil in your stead. To build up the world you wanted to see."

"And to safeguard it into the future, for the children of tomorrow to see."

Ray stood up, feeling the sun's rays on his face, as he continued walking. Crossing a road, he came to another set of gravestones, and walked down the row of markers, stopping at one of them.

"Celina Searstone, 2nd Lieutenant. She graduated from New York's military academy as a mobile suit pilot during the beginning days of the USSA War of Independence, and quickly proved herself in skirmishing battles multiple times. Called back from the front, she was sent to Nova Scotia's AATCTF for advanced tactics training."

Ray paused. Of all the people he had served with, she was the one whom which he had spent the shortest time with. It was her death, however, that had galvanized him into action.

"She was a Blue Cosmos whistleblower, serving to alert the organization to people who would be of a threat to them. Her actions would damn Captain Kelvin Genedan and his comrades, sentencing them to death under the charge of treason."

His mind's eye had no trouble remembering her visage, smiling during the lessons, twisted into fear and guilt during their confrontation.

"She later committed suicide on the 26th of May, CE 73, after the purge of the coup members, leaving behind her two sisters and an ailing father. Her father died a year later, of injuries he had sustained during the Battle of Yggdrasil, in the First Bloody Valentine War."

Ray paused, his voice stuck in his throat, his mouth suddenly dry. He had indirectly caused her death; he had confronted her about her activities, and had put her down in the cruelest manner he could muster.

Never mind that she had joined Blue Cosmos for the financial aid for her father. Never mind that he was spared from the purge only because she had erased his name from the records she had handed up. Never mind that Blue Cosmos had locked her into their servitude, as they had done to all who were unwilling to serve their needs.

She was a victim. And he had weighed her heart down with an iron cross and sharp words that sliced into her already-burdened conscience, all for what she had done out of a misguided sense of necessity. Her crimes could hardly be pardoned. But neither could his behaviour.

"Hardly a way to repay your unwitting benefactor, Ray," he said to himself. He laid down a wreath on the gravestone, one decorated with bright purple flowers. He remembered her mentioning an offhand comment about her preference for purple flowers in a conversation with one of her friends, when he had walked past her.

'_I wanted to be like you. To me, you were a beacon. Even in my world, half-sunk in darkness, the fact that I could still see you was a blessing for me._

_I'm sorry for doing all this to you. I'm truly sorry._

_I'm sure that there are others out there like me. Save them._

_Save us.'_

The contents of her final letter echoed in the voice of his mind. To him, those words were something that he kept close to his heart. He would never stop saving those drowned in the depths of despair. If they lashed out in fear, he would turn the other cheek for them and reach out his other hand. He silently promised to become that strong, at least.

"This is all I can offer you for now. When the world is safe again, we'll talk once more. About anything you want."

Ray stood up. There were still many more people to leave messages to.

The officer continued walking down the long rows of white gravestones.

**CE 74 September 7****th****, Bloody Valentine War Memorial Gravesite **_**Dedication**_**, south of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, United States, Atlantic Federation**

**08 11**

Lily Arres placed a wreath of flowers upon the gravestone. Her eyes slowly followed the carvings on the stone; William Cullan, Master Sergeant, posthumously promoted to Petty Warrant Officer Third.

Beside her, William's father, Taros Cullan, turned to look at her. "I appreciate the trouble you took to come here, Lily. I'm sure Will's pleased to see you here."

"It's not a problem," Lily said, shaking her head slowly. "After all that has transpired, this is the least I could do."

"Never put it that way, dear," Angela Forthriggen, William's mother, said. "Nothing that has happened here, or anywhere else on the planet and around it, is your fault. You rose to the challenge, and even took on the task of saving lives, while others took to the art of slaughter." She touched a wrinkled hand to Lily's shoulder, to where her medic's patch would be when she was in uniform. "You have lived a noble life. Never let anyone else tell you otherwise."

Lily placed her own hand on the elderly woman's own. "Thank you," Lily said, her voice quiet, her tone thick, her throat seemingly obstructed. She did not dare risk a louder reply, for fear of her own emotions overflowing.

As the three walked out of the ceremony, they passed by a man, holding a bouquet of mourning flowers, followed by a young boy. As their paths crossed, the boy's face first displayed surprise at Lily's light green hair and amber eyes, then quickly furrowed into anger, and he stuck out his tongue at Lily. "It's your fault," he stated, then quickly turned and placed himself behind his father. "Go back to space!"

"I'm sorry," the man replied, turning to apologize profusely to Lily. "Ever since the Junius 7 Drop Incident…"

"No, I understand. It's okay," Lily said. The man nodded again, his expression apologetic, as he followed after the boy, who had ran off further.

Taros sighed. "It's a hard path ahead, it seems."

Lily smiled, and looked at the clear blue skies, the grey morning clouds having passed far enough to reveal the shining sun above them. "That is that way it should be. After all that has happened, to ask for any easy way out is to shame the memories of those here." She turned back to look at the two elderly people, the parents of her first crush, and the one whose memories of had led her to realize the truth of the world.

There was no Coordinator, no Natural.

Only those who were consumed by the past to become monsters, and those who consumed their past to become more than what they previously were.

She would work to become one of those who would rise above her genetic stature. It was how she wanted to honour his memory by.

**CE 74 September 12****th****, Bloody Valentine War Space Memorial **_**Solar Tower**_**, Lagrange 2**

**09 34**

Aleiya Varchenowa stood silent in front of the black marble obelisk, situated in the centre of the newly-constructed space station. Work was progressing smoothly, and in time, the structure would become a monument to dwarf even the once-mighty Yggdrasil Space Station.

Now, however, it was a growing infant, tended to by the gentle hands of mechanics from ZAFT, the Lunar Cities, and the majority of member states of the Earth Alliance. Aleiya, as she had always preferred, had requested an assignment to this new front, and as a member of the security forces present, she would sooner toss herself out of the airlock than see this space station destroyed.

Aleiya ran her hands over the smooth surface of the obelisk. "Dedicated to those who fell in space, their bodies offered to the gaze of the stars, in the course of the two Bloody Valentine Wars," she read out aloud.

She had lost plenty of friends in both battles. An obelisk was hardly a way to remember loved ones, but it would have to do. If the living were neglected for too long, there was always the chance that hatred would take over again.

Tomorrow, the official declaration of Lacus Clyne's ascension to the position of Supreme Chairwoman of the PLANTs would take place. Aleiya didn't know what to think of it, but she reasoned that if the woman who spearheaded the effort to keep the world free, regardless of the cost, was at the helm, at least she could expect not to end up fighting for the causes of a homicidal despot.

Aleiya turned her head to the nearest viewport, where a GOUF Ignited drifted past. She tapped the comm unit strapped to her waist. "Is it almost time?"

"Almost, commander. Five more minutes," Murakami Houjou's voice filtered through.

"Roger," Aleiya replied. She brushed her hand over the obelisk one last time. _So long. Rowen_. _See you again_.

**CE 74 September 22****nd****, December Five, PLANTs, Lagrange 5 **

**08 22**

Grace Sakerfield watched a group of children run past her, their joyous laughing temporarily wreathing her in a cocoon of sound. Then they were past her, and their voices receded, leaving Grace alone with her thoughts in this small neighbourhood park.

_A genetic disorder_, the doctor had said, handing her the medical report. _A chemical instability will leave you open to bouts of rage, the resultant emotions unlocking your instinctive potential for some time, but sealing much of your higher thought processes. It's an uncommon condition, but one I've seen in a few other Coordinators. In more severe cases, it causes a split personality, or even such unique case studies like homicidal behaviour and personality projection onto inanimate objects, because of the mental stress._

_It can be suppressed. But it cannot be fully cured._

"Leader," Grace said softly, running a hand through her hair, feeling the despair threatening to overwhelm her. Alan Reidr had always been a firm source of confidence throughout all the years that she had served. Now that he wasn't alongside her, she suddenly felt small, lost, like an animal trapped in an unfamiliar environment. "What should I do?"

She had let the condition persist throughout her service in ZAFT, because in all cases it had been a boon to her. But now that the war was over, she found herself increasingly rejected from positions that she would once have no trouble getting into, especially in the civilian sector.

She had fought for so long, she had forgotten how to be human.

She thought back to the days a few months ago, when former Chairman Gilbert Durandal had addressed the soldiers of ZAFT.

"Would I have been destined to be a soldier?" She asked, to no one in particular. "Destined to fight until the day I finally expire on the battlefield?"

She felt a shadow cross the edge of her vision, stopping in front of her. Raising her sight, she saw a person she never expected to see.

The man smiled, but his gaze remained emotionless, as she stuttered out her reply. "J… Jean Carry?"

"You're not angry for once. That's a change," the man once known as Glittering Star J replied.

Grace's shoulders fell, and she leaned back onto the bench. "Of course not. Now that the times of soldiers are over, I've finally reached the end of my shelf life."

"Perhaps not," Jean said. His face took on a harder look, a set to his jaw that Grace knew from their cadet days. That usually meant that he had an important proclamation.

"Humanity can never put down their weapons, Grace," the former ZAFT ace replied. "And especially not now. The nations have to pick up their plowshares, to show the world that they are sincere about rebuilding. This is our time. We have to protect their efforts from the shadows."

Grace eyed him warily. "What do you mean?"

"Exactly what I've said," Jean replied. "The nations cannot fight back effectively. So we have to do it in their stead."

"A vigilante?" Grace asked. "Or a terrorist?"

"In our efforts to win, Grace," Jean replied, "we gave power to a lot of people who agreed to ally with us. Orb. Terminal. ZAFT. OMNI. Even factions in the Lunar cities. Everyone had focused on gathering allies."

"Not all of them have the best interests of humanity at heart. And there are others with histories far older, which were never discovered, and clapped their hands in glee as they watched ZAFT and OMNI go at each other."

"We cannot allow a second Blue Cosmos or Logos to carve out a foothold. We must mount our resistance as soon as possible."

Grace was silent for a moment, her sight downcast. But she couldn't stop the smile from breaking out across her face. It was the same smile she had carried throughout the four years. In each and every battle, every skirmish, every fight, she had carried this mocking, merciless smile on her face.

_Sorry, Fredric. Rolla. Suzuki. Larry._

_Sorry, Leader. It looks like my hands are still hungering for more._

_But that's okay. Until the day that I expire on a battlefield, far away from home._

_But this time, for a just cause._

She composed herself, and stood up, her gaze locking with Jean Carry's.

"When do we leave?"

**Afterword:**

_And we finally reach the end of Tales of the Cosmic Era. It's been a fun writing project, and I got to fulfill two goals; to tap into the tapestry of the Cosmic Era, housing the first anime to pull me into the world of mecha, a decade ago, and to further improve my own writing skills. Regardless of what may be said about SEED and SEED Destiny today, or how my views of it may have changed, it still has a place in my heart._

_I've written it with the intention to supplement the actual series itself, rather than try and overtly retcon anything, as well as in the same manner as I would build up a world for gamers to play in; as a kid, I've done real-life RP gamemaster roles for my friends, and even now, I never managed to fully let go of that spark of madness and imagination within me, for better or worse._

_While Tales of the Cosmic Era has ended, the stories of the characters within are still not. Those that are dead have left behind words to urge the living on, and the living have their role to play in bringing about the future. Already, another story is in the works, one set in the duration of the Second Bloody Valentine War, and I hope that once again, I'll be able to see you guys and your thoughts in that tumultuous age, where loyalties are tested, and hope is stretched to its breaking point, to temper spirits stronger than steel. I hoped you've found the POV of the everyday human set in the Cosmic Era interesting, and I hope that you've bonded with some of the characters in the process. Because some of them might just return…_

_The story will continue in the time period of a year ago, CE 73, in _

_GUNDAM SEED DESTINY: GREYSCALE WORLD_


	36. SP Chapter: Behind The Stage Set

These are a collection of references and aspects for Tales of the Cosmic Era that you, the reader, might find interesting to know. Inspirations, shout-outs, and references are all in here, accompanied by some very, very, _very_ stale character humor - and more references! I know that this is skirting the rules a bit, but given how you've all labored to swim through this work, I thought it was only right to inform you of what went into the stew.

Conversations are of a semi-meta nature, and shouldn't be taken to mean anything in the actual stories themselves. Otherwise, enjoy.

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 1<strong>

**The Habilis Mass Driver has been changed to being built as the focal point of the Victoria Supercomplex, a Eurasian Federation/African Union super-base. It is heavily guarded, and features the MR-6 railgun bombardment system (a reference to Ace Combat 4's Stonehenge Turret Network).**

**The _Nazca-_class destroyers _Black Dragon_, _Survive_, and the _Laurasia_-class frigate _Seventh Heaven_ are name references to Masked Rider Ryuki's Kamen Rider Ryuga, the Survive card power-up from the aforementioned series, and the song "Zips ~ Seventh Heaven Remix" by TM Revolution, respectively.**

**The way the GINNs are depicted as "sliding" rather than running across large ground areas are a nod to the Gespenst PT from the Super Robot Wars series; specifically, in the OG animes, where they slid across all surfaces because of their numerous high-powered thrusters (but couldn't properly fly). As the GINN is similar, this was incorporated into the story series after a manner, as every MS with more than just a backpack thruster should be able to output enough for a boosted jump, and by extension sliding; it depends on power consumption and thruster model per MS, as a GINN would have better slide control than the thinner and more lightweight CGUE/Strike Dagger, which would be better off running unless it wanted speed, and the GINN OCHER would not be able to sustain the same thrust as the normal GINN in ground conditions, being only good enough for a boosted jump blah blah yadda yadda... ... ...**

Alpha One: Man, I died? That kinda sucks.

Sgt. NoOb: You were dead canonically.

Alpha One: This is _fanfiction_, you know. You could have left me as an amnesiac in a tropical shack with a buncha war orphans and a blind pastor, or something! Now I can't see my wife ever again!

Sgt. NoOb: Your wife wasn't even in the equation.

Alpha One: C'mon, I thought you were better than Fukuda!

Sgt. NoOb: I kinda agree with your role in the opening scenes for Gundam SEED though. Thanks for setting up the mood.

Alpha One: Oh, sod off.

Sgt. NoOb: At least you died to a MR-6, you know? Better than being offed by a tank, wouldn't you say?

Alpha One: That means that I wouldn't have died if you didn't put in the MR-6.

Sgt. NoOb: That means that you would have been gangbanged by fifty anti-ground missiles.

Alpha One: You had that kind of an ending in store for me?! Are you serious?!

Sgt. NoOb: Be glad I tossed it out even before the first words got into your chapter…

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 2<strong>

**ZAFT retrieves a Moebius Zero to tie in with their development of remote weapons. The intended meaning was for the Moebius Zero's wired gunpods to lead to the Dreadnought Gundam's wired weapons, which would later result in the Providence Gundam's wireless DRAGOONs.**

**Nana Sette's name is "seven" in Japanese and "seven" again in Italian.**

**One of the _Nelson_-class battleships, which performed an emergency dodge by venting its portside hangar, is a small nod to Commander Jacob Keyes' maneuver with his UNSC destroyer _Iroquis_, from the Halo novel _The Fall of Reach_, which managed to avoid a pair of guided plasma torpedoes with a similar maneuver.**

Sgt. NoOb: How's it feel to be alive?

Miar: Of course, isn't it, Mister? I'm the captain of the _Nox Avis_! There isn't a plebian or peasant in the world that can match me! _Doh ho ho ho~_

Sgt. NoOb: Er… Miar? Wait, did you always have drill twintails this long?

Nana: …Everyone has a hidden side, Mister. From what I heard, this was what she was like in high school. She just needs a yo-yo to complete the tone…

Sgt. NoOb: Oh, nice. By the way… Ms. Sette? This isn't your debut chapter.

Nana: …I appeared in another chapter.

Sgt. NoOb: About twenty chapters and almost fifty thousand words later, in a supporting role, yes.

Nana: … Apologize to all the people named Nana in fiction.

Sgt. NoOb: Even the armless and legless one?

Nana: … I have her contact number. She can be here in five. Without assistance.

Sgt. NoOb: … No, please, thanks.

Miar: You two are such insolent twerps! How dare you ignore me!? Fall before the might of The Queen of Januarius from Januarius Main High School!

Sgt. NoOb: Arrrgh!

Nana: …Aaah.

Miar: _Oh ho ho ho ho~_!

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 3<strong>

**In this chapter, and with intent to follow through with all subsequent depictions of naval combat, OMNI gains anti-mobile suit torpedoes. Air battles are also much more closely fought due to the VTOL capabilities of the F-7D being taken into account (taken from tactical air maneuvers practiced by the real-life Hawker Siddley/AV-8 Harrier).**

**The _Vozgulov_-class submarines have been up-gunned, and were intended to be capable of more punishing maneuvers than what the anime depicted them as, since I've always thought of them as sea-going versions of ZAFT spaceships. In canon they were hardly an example of classical carrier submarines themselves, instead resembling submersible Russian aviation cruisers, what with their weapons.**

Fredric: Man, my old flame died? This sucks on ice.

Sgt. NoOb: There are many fish in the sea, Fred, if you get what I mean.

Frederic: Har de har. Very funny, Mister.

Sgt. NoOb: Well, Fred, now's your chance to make a pitch to me! With any luck, you'll get a love interest somewhere down the line!

Fredric: Knowing how messed up your services are, I'll probably get a little ghost girl in my mind that I can't touch in any manner at all, or some battle-crazed freak that I have to watch getting blown up because she thought I couldn't dodge a bullet.

Sgt. NoOb: That's… kinda harsh.

Fredric: I wouldn't put it past you.

Grace: Fredric?

Fredric: W-Waah! Grace, what brings you here?

Grace: The "battle-crazed freak" part. We. Need. To. Talk.

Fredric: I, uh, well… all similarities to persons alive, dead, fictional, or non-fictional in my words are unintentional, you know…?

Grace: Fredric. We. Will. Talk. Outside. NOW.

Fredric: Mister, help me~!

Sgt. NoOb: Sorry, bub, she's in snikt-snikt mode. You're on your own.

Fredric: GAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 4<strong>

**I wanted a story that took from a lone person, caught at what at that time might have been seen as the end of the world. If it invoked some imagery from other, more well-known apocalypse scenarios in media, those were exactly what I had wanted to convey.**

**Yoko Asanogawa takes from Yoko Littner, from Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, and the R-9DP2 Asanogawa, a unique R-ship from R-Type Final, which is named after a location in Japan.**

Sgt. NoOb: The first non-fighting chapter!

Kaguya: I did KO someone, no?

Sgt. NoOb: He nearly KOed you for a double kill before that.

Kaguya: Hey, military logic dictates that attackers under cover of stealth will always do more damage with a successful infiltration, right?

Kouya: What are you two talking about?

Kaguya: Owah! Dad, don't scare me like that…

Akiko: Kaguya, why are you talking with this unknown person? Is he a colleague?

Kaguya: Mom too?

Sgt. NoOb: …unknown… person…

Kouya: Well, this is our debut chapter as well. So all three of us should be present.

Yoko: This is also my debut as well.

Sgt. NoOb: Hey! We're running out of space, here!

Yoko/Kaguya/Kouya/Akiko: Well, you can get out first!

Sgt. NoOb: Ugh!

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 5<strong>

**The blue Mobius Zero is a reference to Mobius 1, of Ace Combat 4: Shattered Skies.**

**The segments fighting in the scaffolding are a nod to a few space battle scenes in Martian Successor Nadesico: The Prince of Darkness, and also to the SEED Astray OVA featuring a GINN High Maneuver Type against Serpent Tail and the Astray Blue Frame Second L.**

**Rolla is named in reference to Laura Rola, the persona of crossdressed Loran Cehak from Turn A Gundam.**

Sgt. NoOb: Well, Grace, this is your first chapter! What have you to say about this?

Grace: Will the Moebius Zero pilot be appearing again?

Sgt. NoOb: Well, I've got no plans for him…

Grace: I want my rematch! He better appear again!

Sgt. NoOb: Oh? And what if he doesn't?

Grace: Then be prepared to face the consequences.

Sgt. NoOb: Pfff. As if you can do anything to the great me-Owah! What the hell is that?!

Robo-Fredric: I aM kAijIn FrEdrIc. My mIsTreSs hAs oRdeREd yOuR dEmISe.

Sgt. NoOb: How did you… isn't Fredric the one with robotics expertise?!

Grace: I'm a Coordinator. I can interpret his notes more easily. Anyways, Robo-Fredric, go!

Robo-Fredric: ToOo0h~! KaIjiN kICk~!

Sgt. NoOb: Grace, Grace, we can discuss this. Grace-Guuuuuuuuuuuuh~!

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 6<strong>

**The tank battle was due to my desire to showcase a tank battle (well of course, 'the hell am I saying?). It was partially fueled by the events in the first episode of GSD Stargazer.**

**The three main characters (William, Takimi, and Gerald) were slightly inspired by a dysfunctional trio of tank crew, Louis McKnight, Torch, and Hobsbawm, from Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation.**

**Takimi Fujiwara was named after Takumi Fujiwara, the main character of Initial D. The decision to use the name came from a gag character in Muv-Luv Extra, where a person who looks suspiciously like Takumi exists as a minor (but still badass) character.**

**Rahabinod Ravinan was a nod to Paul Rahabinod, a side character from Muv-Luv Alternative. In here, however, he's much less hammy than his forebear(s).**

Sgt. NoOb: Well, Mr. Culhan, how does it feel to fail at life forever?

William: Oh, stow it, fuckface! I could have won if I wanted to. It's just that that Desert Tiger dude looked like a good guy, so I didn't want to send him into an emotional spiral!

Takimi: Sure, sure. _Tsundereshi~_

Gerald: I wish I could speak as shamelessly as you, 'Sarge…

William: …Do the two of you want to die again!?

Sgt. NoOb: I'm sure the Desert Tiger wouldn't get emo at all. But that aside, good work, William.

William: Heh. This is what happens when you add in elementary tank tactics into the battle! I won't let tanks suffer in indignity any longer! I'll add in even more complex tank formations…. Kekeke, those ZAFT bastards won't know what hit them!

Sgt. NoOb: You're dead though. I can't even put you on the Saragossa Defense Line.

William: My ghost will come back! And then, my chosen protege will tell those ZAFT freaks to _koko to inaku nare_!

Takimi: Shucks, he's starting to channel the Bidan!

Gerald: Man, the last time he did that, he leveled our favorite off-duty bar in El Alamein…!

Sgt. NoOb: …what?!

Takimi: What are you two staring for?! Hurry up and help me restrain him, before he flies into space and rams into Februarius City to get the love of his life back!

William: _ASOBI DE YATTEN JANAIN DA YO_!

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 7<strong>

**Since the original back-story implied a hard-fought takeover, I wanted to do a story with POVs from both sides.**

**One of the soldiers took a bullet to the knee, as a reference to the famous Skyrim meme.**

**Orson is named after the two-bit backstabbing character of the same name from Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones, although in here he's more foul-mouthed than anything else. His envisioned looks, however, are closer to Gauron's, from Full Metal Panic.**

Sgt. NoOb: Kim, it's your _deban_- I mean, debut chapter. Any words?

Kim: Well, there really isn't much to say, is there? I'm a soldier. That means I solve problems. Not problems like, "What to say for my debut?", because that would fall within the purview of bullshit for the sake of fun. I solve practical problems. Like putting rounds where they need to be, or leading a fireteam into a lead-storm.

Sgt. NoOb: …Okay, that's enough on that. But you showed great restrain throughout, didn't you? That's commendable. If it were Orson, he would have used poor Fianna as a shield.

Kim: Well, if your initial character visualization already has him looking like Gauron, and your entire character descriptor of him is "vulgar two-bit asshole", then there're not much chance for him to do anything else, is there?

Sgt. NoOb: Well, true that…

Kim: … still…

Sgt. NoOb: Hm?

Kim: Well… is Fianna making another appearance again?

Sgt. NoOb: I can't be sure I have any plans… wait, why do you have a photo of Fianna in your wallet? How did you even get one in the first place?!

Kim: … … Good recon is the key to winning any battle. Homu!

Sgt. NoOb: I'm the one asking a question, Kim, don't humor me with a half-assed answer… wait, "homu"? …Kim? Kim! Don't run, I've got a helluva things to ask you about! Fianna! Wherever you are, watch your chastity!

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 8<strong>

**The last bit of flying into the ship was a nod to Ace Combat: Assault Horizon, where a Su-35 rams the USS _Anzio_.**

**Rowen Nezxa was named in reference to Rowen from Elemental Gelade (he's envisioned to even look kinda like him), Aleiya Varchenowa was named in reference to Cryska Barchenowa from Muv-Luv Alternative: Total Eclipse (minus the insanity and D+ size), Larry Falke is named in reference to Larry Foulke, a.k.a. Solo Wing Pixy from Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War, Kou Hanada is a nod to Kou Uraki, from Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory, and Sato is the person most would recognize as the terrorist leader who orchestrated the Junius 7 Drop in SEED Destiny.**

Sgt. NoOb: Heya Kou! How's it hangin'?

Kou: I guess being dead has its perks. You know how hard I laughed when we won Panama?

Sgt. NoOb: Probably one of the best troll moments in the original anime. Well, there's that… so, Kou, anything to say?

Kou: Is there even anything worth saying?

Sgt. NoOb: Well, if you say so…

Kou: Okay, okay… actually, Nova was supposed to be a stalemate that OMNI ended up giving in to first, right? Why the big fight?

Sgt. NoOb: Well, I assumed that there had to be a catalyst for the giving in, so I orchestrated this huge battle. I did planned to have a super special secret section talking about OMNI internal politics regarding OMNI, but I'll have to think of something first.

Kou: You were just lazy to fully rewrite the chapter, weren't you? And you even lumped in a future terrorist with me!

Sgt NoOb: Guilty as charged, for most of it.

Sato: _ZENMETSU_~!

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 9<strong>

**For those who've watched MS IGLOO, especially that episode with the anti-MS team, this might seem familiar. However, since the terrain is completely different, and the MS unlike each other, I opted for a win with an ambush rather than taking on the odds.**

**Mendez LaFouze is named after Franklin Mendez, the WO in charge of training the Spartan IIs and IIIs in the Halo series.**

Sgt. NoOb: Hola, Mr. LaFouze!

Mendez: Your assumptions are terrible. I ain't Spanish.

Sgt. NoOb: Sorry. Disregarding that, how's your debut?

Mendez: I'm a Jeigan, right? So how long do you plan on keeping me alive?

Sgt. NoOb: You're familiar with that term?!

Mendez: I've got premium membership to the Old Knights & Undying Whitebeards Club. Free booze every Thursday and Friday night. Oldies of the world all gather around there.

Sgt. NoOb: You're not even official!

Mendez: The power of oldies united transcends silly things like canon and non-canonical status.

Sgt. NoOb: Right…

Mendez: So, back to the original question…

Sgt. NoOb: You just want to see the master script, don't you? Well, you can be rest assured that your role in _Tales of the Cosmic Era_ is over. But I still won't let you see it.

Mendenz: Damn.

Sgt. NoOb: I thought you'll be happier! You ended the story alive!

Mendez: Coming from you; it's either you're going to kill me offscreen, or something else is in the wor-

Sgt. NoOb: AAAAAAH THAT'S CLASSIFIED! SHUT UP!

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 10<strong>

**Pretty much out of a desire to see the last major battle before JOSH-A elaborated upon.**

**Mercenary Rilia Karvok was initially named after and based off Lilia Kejenberg of Muv-Luv Unlimited: The Day After. After several changes, however, the reference ends at being a similar first name.**

**Jean Carry's reasons for leaving ZAFT is now hinted to be due to the hiding of the fact that 3rd generation Coordinators are beginning to be sterile, from the general Coordinator population, by the PLANT Council.**

Sgt. NoOb: Well, seeing as Andrew is now off coffee-making somewhere, who wants to take his place?

Alan: Is there really a need for this?

Grace: There better be, or else tonight's alternate entertainment will be me breaking someone's spine.

Sgt. NoOb: Woah there, kitty, not my fault you lost to the J-bro, you catch my drift?

Grace: I'll catch your drift and break it over my knee, Mister.

Sgt. NoOb: Are you that mad at losing?

Grace: Yes, I am! Do you realize that I've been losing to special characters or being beaten to the punch ever since I appeared in _Tales of a Cosmic Era_? Everyone got their moment except me!

Sgt. NoOb: Hey, you got your moments too. Not everyone can mow through legions of nameless things.

Grace: You don't write with regards to nameless things though. This way, I won't ever get a chance to shine.

Sgt. NoOb: Maybe it's not you. Maybe it's Alan and the others overshadowing you.

Grace: What?! Is this true?!

Alan: Hey now…

Grace: Well, I could do away with Fredric… maybe other ZAFT pilots… but I can't off the Leader, he's too awesome…

Alan: Grace… your expression… it's kind of scary…

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 11<strong>

**It was inspired by a story told to me during my compulsory military service, of how a single rocket round cleared house in a Middle Eastern anti-insurgent operation. Whether it was true or not, the fact remains that support vehicles (an airstrike in the story's case) are still a powerful deciding factor in urban infantry combat. The infantry were there to provide a human viewpoint on the intricacies of civilian-vs.-military issues (such as landing rockets on people's houses).**

**The DINN squadron "Wyzard" is named in reference to Wizard Squadron, from Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War.**

Sgt. NoOb: 'Sup, Robert, your ears still working?

Robert: Yes, they are. Future medical technology is awesome.

Sgt. NoOb: Man, if you had powered armor, things would be so much more heroic. Funny how no one managed to miniaturize the mobile suit, and you guys are still stuck with peacekeeping-level flak jackets and basic rifles.

Robert: You say that, but you're a hardcore giant robot fan. Don't pull that on me, anyways, I've already played the original Battletech.

Sgt. NoOb: Wouldn't it be awesome to be an Elemental then?

Robert: I thought I was in a human relations story, not a Band of Brothers short.

Sgt. NoOb: How about the powered armor in the newest Starship Troopers movie?

Robert: … And what am I supposed to kill, now?

Sgt. NoOb: Or you could be a Spartan-IV!

Robert: Hey, that's going over the line, man.

Sgt. NoOb: Man, are you sure you're a Coordinator? If I didn't know better, I'd call you a Natural, or an Imperial Guard romanticist. You know, flashlight, faith in the God-Emperor, the works.

Robert: Puhh-! Say what?!

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 12<strong>

**I wanted to use the chance to write about how some of the things were changed in this rendition of the Cosmic Era… it ended up being a talking chapter instead.**

**Karn Droven was initially planned as a ZAFT nod to Haman Karn from Neo Zeon, the primary antagonist of Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ, but it was later dropped, and all that remained was the name.**

Sgt. NoOb: …

Karn: …

Sgt. NoOb: … …

Karn: … …

Sgt. NoOb: … … …

Karn: … … …

Sgt. NoOb: … … … …

Karn: … … … …

Sgt. NoOb: There… really wasn't anything interesting in your chapter, wasn't it?

Karn: Probably not.

Sgt. NoOb: … … … … …

Karn: … … … … …

Sgt. NoOb: ****.

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 13<strong>

**Battleship 2012, and that's all that needs to be said.**

**The _Potemkin_ in this story is a nod to the historical Russian ship of the same name, but the decision to use the name was first introduced by a Yuktobanian warship, also named the _Potemkin_, in Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War.**

**The _Halcyon Days_ is in reference to the_ Pillar of Autumn_, a _Halcyon_-class light space cruiser from Halo: Combat Evolved, the _Anzio_ is a nod to the appearance of the USS _Anzio_ in Ace Combat: Assault Horizon; the _Kestrel_ is a nod to the OFS _Kestrel_, an aircraft carrier from Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War, and the _Cairo_ is a nod to Cairo Station, an Orbital Magnetic Accelerator Cannon Station appearing in Halo 2.**

Sgt. NoOb: Hello, Captain Zanaya.

Zanaya: Hello, Mister.

Sgt. NoOb: How does it feel to be in one of the most influential battles in the SEEDverse?

Zanaya: Aside from knowing that the Atlantic Federation threw us up as offerings, nothing much, I'd say. I've had plenty of battles in the Mediterranean waters.

Sgt. NoOb: Don't you ever wish you were a ZAFT MS pilot? With your calmness, you could go far.

Zanaya: Not really. I like having others under my command. It's a… how would you people say it? "A warm and fuzzy feeling".

Sgt. NoOb: _Gehk-_ So you're an S too?

Zanaya: I can understand you, you know. No, it's not that. Isn't it nice to know that there are people you can rely on?

Sgt. NoOb: Well… that's true…

Zanaya: And that their life or death hinges on each and every decision, yet they're willing to trust you with it?

Sgt. NoOb: That's also true… Woah, where did all these people come from?!

Anatoly/Anya/ Rina: Captain… We… the crew are indebted to you!

Zanaya: Come! Come into my arms! We're all family! Mother Russia accepts all!

Sgt. NoOb: Rather than S or M… maybe… it's… a benign form of egoism…

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 14<strong>

**An introduction chapter for a group of people, whom I intend to use as an explanation for many of the events in Seed Destiny. Consider it a "setting-up" chapter.**

**Kenroukuen Mei is named from two sides; her name comes from Mei Chang (localized as May Chang, or it came from the panda, take your pick) from FullMetal Alchemist, while her surname is named after the Japanese location of the same name; the inspiration came from the R-9DP3 Kenroukuen, an R-craft first introduced in R-Type Final, and later in R-Type Tactics II: Operation Bitter Chocolate. Not surprisingly, the Kenroukuen is the strongest of its kind, given how Mei is within this chapter.**

Sgt. NoOb: Ah, well, we're nearing the midway point, aren't we?

Hawaki/Houka: Yes… _umu_.

Sgt. NoOb: So how did you feel about the Battle of Orb? Would it have been different if you were fighting against the Druggies instead?

Hawaki/Houka: Definitely, _umu_. We'll have beaten them senseless, _umu_.

Hawaki/Houka: That chaotic style will be no match for our synchronized fighting skills, _umu_!

Sgt. NoOb: How about against the entire fleet?

Hawaki/Houka: Well, that might be a bit hard, _umu_.

Hawaki/Houka: I mean, it is an entire fleet, after all, _umu_.

Hawaki/Houka: But I think we could have held on longer, _umu_.

Hawaki/Houka: And Chancellor Uzumi killing himself was seriously off-key, _umu_.

Sgt. NoOb: Well, I sorta understand why…

Hawaki/Houka: Yeah, but the entire council along with him, _umu_? Thanks to that the Seiran family came to power, _umu_! They were always kind of favorable towards the Atlantic Federation, but their works later on really took the cake, _umu_!

Hawaki/Houka: That's right, _umu_! Ledonir Kisaka's all manly and muscular and all, but he doesn't have any political power,_ umu_! Ms. Cagalli was without political allies for almost four years, _umu_!

Sgt. NoOb: … You know, I've always been wondering since you all take turns speaking, but what was your seating arrangement again?

Hawaki/Houka: Kananoh is Kananoh, _umu_.

Sgt. NoOb: And that wordcatch! You think you're adorable taking after some physically petit, foul-mouthed alien researcher who was responsible for changing all of the world's presidents into girls?!

Hawaki/Houka: Hmmm…. _umu_!

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 15<strong>

**Closure is finally brought to Victoria. Pretty much the reverse of Chapter 10 from the OMNI POV.**

**The first scene was inspired by Unicorn Gundam's Episode 4, where Zeon remnants in Doms and Dowdages beginning the assault on Torrington Base rushed across open ground.**

**Most of the callsigns are callouts to other series; the Blast Guards from Muv-Luv Alternative's TSFs' tactical equipment arrangement, the Black Sabres after the Black Knives from Muv-Luv Unlimited: The Day After and the Space Marines Chapter Sable Swords from Warhammer 40, 000, and EWACS Deep Eye after the tradition of Ace Combat EWACS callsigns.**

**Guy Leon was supposed to pilot a Duel Dagger in this chapter, but I realized it wouldn't make sense for him to be blasted back into a Strike Dagger in his later appearance. For reasons I've forgotten by now, I was really, really against him taking anything more advanced than a Strike Dagger in his featured chapter, thus, I downgraded him here.**

Sgt. NoOb: And we're right back to the Victoria Supercomplex! How's it feel to participate in a hot drop operation, guys?!

Ash: Pretty nerve-wracking.

Kahora: I thought it was pretty cool. Especially the way we were surrounded and almost got offed at the end.

Sgt. NoOb: Honestly, I wanted a wipeout, you know, but then, since there were already so little OMNI POVs, I can hardly kill off the few that matter, right?

Ash: Oh! So we'll get new roles?

Sgt. NoOb: Maybe. Perhaps not here.

Kahora: Where else?

Sgt. NoOb: Not really in my interest to say. But don't worry, you'll have chances.

Ash: … we aren't going to be used for some fodder to be killed offscreen in an attempt to bring in some EMOTIONAL situations, are we?

Sgt. NoOb: I really can't say, aha, ah ha ha ha...

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 16<strong>

**The European region is cleared of war. The Ace Combat-esque vibes in the air battle scenes are intentional; specifically, Ace Combat 4: Shattered Skies.**

**Yorui Matsuda's character and envisioned looks are loosely based off Matsuda "Murderface" Chiaki, the main character of 4chan's /tg/ board's Magical Girl Noir Quest (mostly in the deadpanning, although in the end not much deadpanning was done), Astor Fenzikel was named after Astore, a character from Fire Emblem: Binding Blade (or you might be more familiar with its romanji'd title, _Fire Emblem: Fūin no Tsurugi_), and Annette Selveta was named after Anett Hosenfeld, from Muv-Luv Alternative: Schwarzemarken. Differences in character are mainly Hosenfeld's mad outbursts of rage to Selveta's cold rolling fury.**

**The _Iwo Jima_ is named in reference to the USS _Iwo Jima_, a real-life assault ship of the US Navy, while the _Shinano_ is named after the IJN _Shinano_ from Muv-Luv Alternative, a _Yamato_-class battleship. In real-life, the IJN _Shinano_ existed as a _Yamato_-class changed into an aircraft carrier during construction.**

Sgt. NoOb: Alright, this time will be a double feature!

Astor/Annette: Hello.

Sgt. NoOb: Alright, fire away!

Astor: Am I dead?

Sgt. NoOb: Waha, what's up with this difficult question right off the bat! I can't answer that!

Annette: Are you ever going to include me in another story?

Sgt. NoOb: Woah, a daring question! I already did, but if you mean a new feature with you, I don't know~!

Astor/Annette: You're not Aoi Toori. Stop speaking like him.

Sgt. NoOb: … Sorry.

Astor: Still, I'm a bit surprised that I wasn't dead by halfway through. What were the odds of me surviving?

Sgt. NoOb: About as much as getting two "6" on a pair of dice after three bounces for each dice, and missing the Go to Jail tile by exactly one count.

Astor: Uwah. That's a pretty bad draw.

Sgt. NoOb: Well, don't worry. Maybe, just maybe, I might not kill you offscreen.

Astor: That would suck worse!

Annette: Pfff.

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 17<strong>

**The title was named after the first mission in Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation (Through the Heart of a Nation).**

**The opening scene for the chapter was inspired by Halo 3 ODST's own opening cutscene, during the Battle of New Mombassa.**

**Grace's various recollections of the escape from Gibraltar was a reference to the Astray OVAs, in which one of them, you can see an assault ship crashing onto the shores and unloading mobile suits onto the ground. I've a nagging feeling that that was supposed to be Carpentaria, given the background, but in order to placate both sides of possibilities I purposely left the aerial fight and the landing forces with as little explaination as I could; that they were both abusing this tactic, and it was used at Carpentaria as well.**

**Interestingly enough, in the Japanese Wikipedia article on Cosmic Era events, it was noted that Operation 8.8, rather than being a speedy finish as I had envisioned it, was actually a long, draggy battle.**

**The assault ship War-Head is named after the R-9C War-Head, from R-Type II/R-Type Final.**

**I originally wanted to have the War-Head's comms say "_tora, tora, tora_" at the start of its attack, but being unable to find the appropriate context for it without forcing the WWII reference, I dropped that notion in the end.**

Guy: Hot damn, that was one hell of a scrape.

Sgt. NoOb: Ah, c'mon, you know I'm not the kind of person to give you an elaborate backstory just to kill you off. Your kind needs a bit of continuous screentime to generate some sympathy.

Guy: Uh... thanks?

Annette: More importantly, when will I appear again after this? Doesn't look like there'll be any chances...

Sgt. NoOb: Congrats, you've survived the Bloody Valentine War!

Annette: ... that's it?

Sgt. NoOb: ... well, what did you want? You wanna rot at Kaohsiung?

Annette: Well, no, of course not, but still... after establishing my character as a sorta-badass... that's kind of anti-climatic, I guess?

Sgt. NoOb: ... I can cook up climatic if you want.

Guy: *chortles*

Annette: Huh. No, thanks...

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 18<strong>

**Viktor's demeanor is slightly based off Nikolai in Modern Warfare 3.**

Sgt. NoOb: And we're back with the littlest Coordinator!

Aleiya: Woah, watch it. Who's little?

Sgt. NoOb: Well, you, at this point in the story.

Aleiya: I could get muscles if I wanted! But I wouldn't look good as a six-foot-tall Slavic gorilla.

Richard: Oy, watch it.

Sgt. NoOb: Right, enough muscling around. How how did you find this story?

Aleiya: Okay, I guess? Sure as hell didn't expect to be a survivor of JOSH-A, though.

Richard: I guess this is my debut? I'm not going to be tossed into impossible situations now, am I?

Sgt. NoOb: Nu fufufufufufufu~

Richard: What do you mean, "nu fufufufufufufu~"? Don't "nu fufufufufufufu~" me!

Aleiya: Heh. I guess you'll live, uncle.

Richard: ... that didn't nearly sound as good as I thought it should be, young lady!

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 19<strong>

**The general atmosphere of Flogger Squadron was intended as a nod to the _Werewolf_ Battalion from Muv-Luv Alternative: Schwarzemarken.**

**Kaguya's squadron callsign, and letting the ZAFT medical convoy go, were taken from a combination of 8th MS Teams' penultimate battle scene with the fleeing Zanzibar-class, and from one of the missions in Ace Combat 4, where you have to escort a fleeing civilian airliner with Erusean defectees, which cameos a Kei Nagase, callsign Edge, when she was featured in Ace Combat 2. **

Flogger Squadron: Heave-ho, heave-ho!

Kaguya: Mphhhhfph~~~~~~!

Patricia: Aaah! What are those people doing to Captain Sakamoto with ropes and a gag!?

Alvan: Taking her away, I guess?

Patricia: Waah~ Ghost!

Alvan: This is the "everything goes" corner, don't you know?

Patricia: ... really? Then I want to be a super ace pilot who can shoot everything and slash everyone and totally own all the faggot losers forever-

Sgt. NoOb: That spots's already taken.

Patricia: Who're you? And what do you mean, taken?

Sgt. NoOb: _That_ kind of taken.

_*Freedom screams past overhead in the skies.*_

Patricia: Eh? Why?

Sgt. NoOb: ... well, you're not voiced by Souichiro Hoshi. In fact, you're not voiced at all! Look at this chart! Look at all their hair! Kira Yamato's not just one person, he's every character Hoshi has voiced so far combining into one super-entity reborn into this universe! And this isn't even his final foooooooooorm~!

Patricia: Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeh!? I didn't know that! Teach me how to get a final form too!

Alvan: ... *sigh*

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 20<strong>

**A gathering of all the characters introduced in this series thus far.**

**Lieutenant-General Kang Zeng Wan is named after Shaman King KanZenBan, a new title for the main Shaman King series, and Asakura Touga after the Asakura family line, in the same series as the aforementioned.**

Sgt. NoOb: I guess I could call this a character buffet?

Nain: So this makes it my debut too?

Kae: And mine.

March: And mine!

Nain/Kae: You couldn't even make it as a sub-character.

March: Kuh-! What cruel words!

Ray: ... I guess this is my first official appearance, then.

Nain/Kae: Priviledged characters should shut up!

Kelvin: I guess this is my first appearance too!

Ray: ... all these overly-hyper people.

Faceless characters: ... ... ... don't we matter?

* * *

><p><strong>Chapters 21, 22, 23<strong>

**The decision to use the CGUE Assault was partially due to my love for the YF-23 Black Widow II from Muv-Luv Alternative, which can use up to six guns with a load-out appropriately named the Gun Sweeper.**

**Darian Forsseseur was named as a nod to Darian, the League of Legends Demacian hero. He also kind of looks like him, in the size department.**

**Darry Amberheart was named after Darry Adai from Gurren Lagann. Yes, I am aware that Darry Adai is a girl. Leading from the aforementioned, I initially planned for a Darrry-Gimmy dynamic between Houjou and Darry, but that idea didn't make it through in the end.**

**Melinda Hausen's family name came from Fire Emblem: Blazing Sword (known in the US as just Fire Emblem), where one of the main characters, the swordswoman Lyn's full name, is purportedly (with some proof) Lyndis Hausen, grandaughter of the Lord of Caelin (p.s. you can play her character again in FE: Awakening on the 3DS! Crossovers yeah!).**

**The base material for the cheorography of the lunar city battle segment came from Gundam Unicorn Episode 4's own segment.**

**Kaguya Sakamoto (Mei Kenroukuen) was originally slated to appear in Chapter 22/23, but the lack of an OMNI viewpoint meant that she was cut. Ash Sorbough (first appearance Chapter 15) was also slated to be one of the OMNI pilots here.**

Sgt. NoOb: First time I tried writing an original arc...

Darry: Hey! What the hell? I suck donkey sacks in this!

Darian: Oh, shush. You were never destined for anything more than a 1-arc side-role.

Darry: Ugh...! You...!

Nana: Heyoooooo~ I'm back~

Sgt. NoOb: Happy now? That's one slot less for an additional beautiful female character!

Nana: ... I'm not a beautiful female character?

Sgt. NoOb: Er... no... I mean...

Darry: Haha! Dumbass!

Aleiya: Oy! Darry! How long are you going to skive!

Darry: Dammit! The slave driver found me!

Aleiya: I'll make a slave drive **you**, you slacking bastard!

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 24<strong>

**Kelvin Genedan's family name comes from Gan Eden, the Earth protector in the Super Robot Wars Alpha series.**

Kelvin: Hot damn, that escalated quickly.

Sgt. NoOb: Well, what did you expect? I can't exactly break canon even if I try to make the Earth Alliance suck less. All I can do is make it so that good guys like you have the shittiest luck imaginable whenever you spring up a revolution.

Kelvin: Yeah, but still, it would be nice to be made a martyr.

Celina: At least you're not the troubled antagonist.

Kelvin: You don't look that troubled to me.

Celina: Yeah, well, I didn't exactly die with pain and fire. But Captain Feric hates me now! *sobbing sounds*

Kelvin: Meh. Not like you'll have better luck anyways.

Celina: ... What!?

Sgt. NoOb: ... wait, how the hell did you know?

Kelvin: I... well, um...

Nina (far-off): He stole the keys to your spoilers cabinet!

Celina: *more sobbing sounds*

Sgt. NoOb: KELVIN!

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 25<strong>

**A revisiting of the "multi-view" format used in Chapter 20. Ultimately, I thought it would be better to give a few small references before settling in on the trusty doctor.**

**The _Admiral Istomin_ was named after Russian admiral Vladimir Istomin.**

**The attack on Kourou City, located in French Guiania, was intended as a direct reference, both meta and in-story, to Gundam SEED Stargazer Episode 1, and is further cemented by a French-sounding character, Edmond Du Clos, being on the scene. In real-life, French Guiania has a European space shuttle launch site located there, called the **Guiana Space Centre**.  
><strong>

Darry: IT HAS BEGUN~ C'mon, Houjou, chant something too!

Houjou: ...

Richard: What's this racket all about? Young man, you sound like a cultist!

Darry: What?! Don't you dare make fun of my singing!

Richard: I've heard better singing from dying foxes.

Darry: You...!

Fianna: The doctor is right. You sound like a cultist.

Darry: Aarrggh! No one understands the me as a genius! Am I doomed to live my life out in poverty? Oh, woe is me!

Houjou: ...

Aleiya: The only woe you'll get is a boot to the head!

Richard: ... you?

Darry: Begone, foreman of evil!

Aleiya: I'll begone your spirit of laziness, punk! I don't know how you managed to escape the ship, but I did it too, and I'll - OI! COME BACK HERE!

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 26<strong>

**I took Yzak's callsign and decided to work upon that to give the ZAFT forces some semblance of organization, hopefully to turn the scope of the combat into something that the reader could appreciate as "vast". Hence the various military units, the major ones being named after the format of NATO alphabets/star constellations, also taking after the style of Yzak's callsign. I also tried to emulate Yzak's forward manner in his speech, to a varying degree of success.**

Sgt. NoOb: Alright, Suzuki, this is your debut chapter! Say something.

Suzuki: H... hello...

Sgt. NoOb: Damn me if you're not softspoken. Do it with guts! Guts!

Suzuki: R... right... um... h... hello!

Sgt. NoOb: Dammit.

Suzuki: I just want to... get on with my orders...

Sgt. NoOb: ... you want to die that quickly?

Suzuki: I'll die...? Uuuh...

Sgt. NoOb: Well, no, yes, maybe so, might not... you know how these things go, no sense killing off the obvious bait most of the time, but some formulae are designed to touch heartstrings no matter how often they're used...

Suzuki: ... so... I'll die... later on...?

Sgt. NoOb: You really want to know?

Suzuki: ... yes...

Sgt. NoOb: Alright then. YOU!

Sgt. NoOb: ARE!

Sgt. NoOb: GOING!

Suzuki: ... ... going?

Sgt. NoOb: TO HAVE AN AMBIGUOUS END!

Suzuki: ... ...

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 27<strong>

**I initially wanted to use this chapter to set up the Second BVW as a sort of a stalemate war, to better explain why no one in OMNI but Blue Cosmos, and ZAFT, did anything for the better part of SEED Destiny, but a faux-mock naval battle was what I ended up running with.**

**The _Mithril Sword_ is named after the paramilitary organization Mithril, from Full Metal Panic.**

**Glaces Hara is named after Glacies, an OG antagonist character from Super Robot Wars D, and the English surname O'Hara, while Hanasaki Genbu's family name is taken from Hanasaku Iroha, an anime series. Bredan Halvey's name came from the character Brendan, from Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald. His surname is, clearly enough, from Louise Halvey, of Gundam 00.**

Sgt. NoOb: You know, damn me if I'm wrong, but I haven't seen any Arab Coordinators.

Bandar: So it seems.

Sgt. NoOb: Doesn't it bother you?

Bandar: Not really. My family is by and large secular. How else do you think I got made a Coordinator? Up in space everyone bleeds and works the same.

Sgt. NoOb: That does make sense... It seems like the Arabs aren't very well-represented in SEED.

Bandar: Given SEED's first air-date I'm not surprised, but it's not like the Japanese to give a damn about this sort of things. I did remember there was supposed to be a sub-plot about a coalition of Middle-East nations, but... well... you see what we have.

Sgt. NoOb: What, Desert Dawn not good enough for you?

Bandar: They're glorified bandits! They're dime a dozen in the entire North African/Middle-Eastern region! I would have liked a representation of a semblance of government in the Middle East. I mean, at least the Viking descendants got a national mention via the Kingdom of Scandinavia. The Arabs got nothing. Apparently, in SEED Destiny, it's all scattered, oppressed villages. What are the rest, bedouin?

Sgt. NoOb: Well, you can't have 'em all. Apparently, in SEED, Earth is comprised of the American and European continents, and there may or may not be an Asia.

Bandar: Well, back to the question. Arab Coordinators... Wasn't there a setting plot point where the Middle East gathered together to renounce genetic enhancements due to somthing?

Sgt. NoOb: Well, there's something like that, but you know what SEED's backstory is like-

_*Freedom screams past overhead in the skies.*_

Bandar: ... point taken.

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 28<strong>

**Partially out of personal opinion that there was _no way_ a group of commandos could be _so_ inept against what amounts to a two-man militia. And also to hopefully present that not all of Orb would magically roll over to the Seirans just because they had one stupid treaty signed behind Cagalli's back.**

**The Orb Infantry teams are named in the style of Muv-Luv Alternative's Japanese Royal Guard/Imperial Army units; "War Sword", "Crimson Knife", "Blood Lance", and "Red Fang", to "Wardog", "Steel Lance", "Blood", and, for those familiar with Total Eclipse, "White Fang".**

**Kouen Kabira is named for a character in the Muv-Luv Alternative fangame Faraway Dawn, who is simply known as "Kabira", while Tanamura Ichijou's surname came from the Takamura family, also another prominent samurai family of the Shogunate in Muv-Luv Alternative Total Eclipse.**

**There was supposed to be a sub-plot involving the ZAFT commandoes being revealed to be mercenaries given unmarked and unrecognized ZAFT gear (they probably didn't expect Andrew to be alive, after all, and still siphoning information off the ZAFT network) to assasinate the pink princess and her merry band, but I left it out in the end due to viewpoint constraints. It's still usable, however, mainly for what it is, it manages not to break canon.**

Sgt. NoOb: That was a right an' proper manly fight, Kabira.

Kabira: Yeah, but they got away in the end.

Sgt. NoOb: It can't be helped. I needed to tie in to the Freedom's appearance after all.

Kabira: Hm. I'm more interested in the enemy. In the end, it was all but outright said that Durandal sent them, but by professional standards, these cockups are borderline incompetent! How did a platoon of trained soldiers let escape a half-blind quarter-disabled, a has-been, with a blind willow-branch of a man, a princess by every definition of the word, a gun-blind war ace who sure as I can tell you can't differenciate a firing pin apart from a nail, and over a fireteam's worth of scared and sleepy children in tow?!

Sgt. NoOb: Well, now you know.

Kabira: Or more like divine inspiration struck 'ol Yamato over there and his superhuman hearing caught something during his REM sleep or some equally retarded reason. Not like the not-ZAFT commandoes were being extra-cautious or anything. They need to shore up their basic soldiering before they can try taking my guys on again.

Sgt. NoOb: *shrug* Hey, I'm but the messager. Don't shoot me.

Kabira: Huh. Would it but kill the director to make it so that they would have at least some allies in Orb and not have to go galloping off into the world, leaving the rest of us in Orb to rot under the Seirans. Fools and capers, the whole lot of those priviledged idiots. Well, back to the main question. Will I ever get a chance to prove my worth again?

Sgt. NoOb: ... ... weeeeeeell...

Kabira: ... you're cooking something up, aren't you...?

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 29<strong>

**Callad Torris' nickname, Cal, is from Trainer Cal of the Trainer's House in Pokemon Gold/Silver/Crystal.**

**The tone of the story was inspired by Chapter 18, but set into a more post-battle scenario.**

Sgt. NoOb: Aaaaand it's time for more Everything Goes Corner! Cal, Zekiyes, how ya'll hangin'?

Cal: You suck.

Zekiyes: Like, major balls.

Sgt. NoOb: I thought you guys would be more grateful for being the main feature of a story.

Cal: It's just cloak-and-dagger stuff on my side. Big deal.

Zekiyes: Nothing on my end you couldn't tell in a tale half the length and as the part of another story. We don't even appear again after this!

Sgt. NoOb: Damn you guys are cruel. I thought a bit of focus on the boots on the ground would be helpful!

Cal: Yeah, well, it wasn't a very good boots on the ground story. Nothing to elaborate on except that OMNI marches in and starts killing shit and then we have Miss Turkish insurgent-

Zekiyes: Oy!

Cal: -Ms Turkish freedom fighter get on some piping-hot rocket action, then we do our own island-stowaway routine, minus a poisonous snake and a jumpy head-of-state in disguise, and head off.

Sgt. NoOb: Well, you think of something better than-

Cal: Beach episode-

Sgt. NoOb/Zekiyes: Screw you!

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 30<strong>

**The _Roksova_ is named for the F-14AN3 Mindseeker from Muv-Luv Alternative.**

**Nick Garrond's name came from Garrod Ran, of Gundam X fame.**

**Lily getting slammed with a rock took inspiration from FPSes like Modern Warfare 3, especially after your character was wounded in a cutscene, and you have to wait while watching through a blood-flecked screen about pretentious, annoying villians with 100% accurate pistol aim despite being thrown out of a flying helicopter with a chest stab wound. The descriptive cheorography part where she recovers from the stone-powered headshot was taken from one of the the Halo 3 trailers, featuring Master Chief in first-person putting his helmet back on.**

**Lily's role was originally supposed to be taken by Fianna Alshyre, another character from an earlier chapter.**

Sgt. NoOb: Alas for the Germans!

Lily: Well, can't save 'em all. I mean, seriously, look at the Destroy. That's just unfair.

Sgt. NoOb: Wouldn't be a bad guy faction unit without some cheap shots.

Lily: Yeah, well, that was OP'd as hell. I mean, seriously, I thought I was going to die there.

Sgt. NoOb: Hey, nothing like a bit of good 'ol fashioned run sequences to get you pumped!

Lily: From infantry, yeah, but I'm a Coordinator, not Supes. I can't outfly rockets. That aside it's kind of sad, isn't it? I mean, Blue Cosmos coming to power and all.

Sgt. NoOb: At this point, had the show bothered, they'll be saying that the Eurasian and Atlantic Federation were at war. I guess it's safe to assume as such without them spelling it out. 'Least you guys got GENESIS to balance it out, eh?

Lily: Hey, don't look at me, I save lives, I'm not like a kook like you.

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 31<strong>

**The title of the chapter came from the opening song of Deus Machina Demonbane, titled "Man, God, Machine". In this case, however, it takes on a different meaning from the Lovecraftian undertones of Demonbane.**

**The decision to name the _Laurasia_-class the _Eschaton_ was from R-Type Tactics; the Boldo Cruiser has the Eschaton prefix to its name. Eschaton is an actual term, and is roughly equivalent to Ragnarok or the end of time in meaning.**

**Cayun's name is a bastardized spelling of "Cajun". I was eating some chicken at that time.**

Sgt. NoOb: Ah, Enra, my most manliest concepted character to date!

Enra: Haha, thanks.

Mendez: Oh, it's not me?

Sgt. NoOb: W-w-what the hell are you doing here?

Enra: Oh, I invited him in. Turns out we had the same great-great-grandparents!

Sgt. NoOb: ... really?

Enra: Well, minus one "great" for Mendez here. But no matter where you go, the infantry spirit remains the same.

Mendez: After all, all soldiers would be brothers, but for the line drawn in the sand by their commanders.

Sgt. NoOb: That is true, that is true. Wise words from a veteran.

Enra: Well, that was a messy end. We really hit the shit with that one.

Sgt. NoOb: The fact that SEED Destiny was so devoid of discreet politics was what worked in my favor. Mysterious factions? Ha! I can play that game too. And I won't need to heartstring the previous protagonist faction to do it.

Enra: So did anyone else make it out?

Sgt. NoOb: Hm... well...

Enra: ... well...?

Sgt. NoOb: Read the director's draft of the final chapter!

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 32<strong>

**Not many references for this one, or for the final four stories, for that matter. At this point of time they were more of side-dishes to the main story than anything else. Despite racking my mind, I couldn't think up of a suitable fallout scenario for the final 13 episodes of GUNDAM SEED Destiny.**

Seryes: Hello.

Sgt. NoOb: Welcome! How's your back after the war?

Seryes: Healing nicely. Still walking, although the doctors have said that I was lucky to be able to walk at all.

Sgt. NoOb: Well, at least you got your life back.

Seryes: Yeah, but what the heck? I wanted to pilot things! This will bust me back to the training insititutions .

Sgt. NoOb: Someone's got the teach the striplings.

Seryes: That is true, but I wanted to pilot for the thrill of it.

Sgt. NoOb: Ah, well, if you're so insistent, I'll see if I can cook up something.

Seryes: You mean it? Thanks!

Patricia: HEY! HOW COME YOU DIDN'T COOK UP ANYTHING FOR ME?!

Sgt. NoOb: You were already in this chapter!

Patricia: That was a cameo! No count! I want to be a super ace pilot who can shoot everything and slash everyone and totally own all the faggot losers forever! I wanna I wanna I WANNA I WANNA I WANNA-

Seryes: Patricia.

Patricia: -! Sorry.

Sgt. NoOb: Woah. Patricia, that glare fried a hole in the wall behind you...

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 33<strong>

**The MVF-M14A Tonbogiri is meant to evoke images of the real-world F-14 Tomcat fighter aircraft. It is named after one of the Three Great Spears of Japan, Tonbogiri roughly meaning "Dragonfly-cut/Dragonfly-cutter", to reflect the theme of the "Murasame" name.**

**The sudden appearance of the Vosgulovs was meant to mirror the surfacing scenes of the Scinfaxi/Hrimfaxi, the super-submarines of Ace Combat 5, in the missions that they appear in.**

**Hawahaku Maeda's name was inspired from Harunobu Madarame of Genshiken fame... he's the best character ever.**

Natsume: I protest this course of plot!

Sgt. NoOb: For what?

Natsume: It's an unjust representation of the Orb fighting spirit! I'm sure I wasn't supposed to go down that easily!

Sgt. NoOb: Miss, if you were a level 40 character, Alan Reidr would be level 170 with max-tier item set and weapons load.

Natsume: So what level am I?

Sgt. NoOb: I'll be gracious. You're about 20.

Natsume: 20?! Only 20?!

Sgt. NoOb: It's kind of hard to justify it being any higher when the series has you guys dying in droves. Especially when just a few episodes prior a group of three Murasame pilots took down a Gundam.

Natsume: Oh, c'mon. Sting Oakley might have been a good group leader, but he was a sorry excuse for a pilot!

Sgt. NoOb: Yeah, well, he was still a Gundam pilot. Now for example, it's reversed, and you have someone with a Gundam coming after you. Shinn Asuka may be a frothing-at-the-mouth berserker, but he's not poor by any definition of the word. If he's at that level, what did you think actual veterans of the Bloody Valentine War would be like?

Natsume: Urgh... It's not fair! I wanted to be a super ace pilot who can shoot everything and slash everyone and totally own all the faggot losers forever too!

Sgt. NoOb: That sounds disturbingly familiar...

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 34<strong>

**Kyra Fhorst is named after Kir Efremov, a minor character in Muv-Luv Alternative Total Eclipse. Early on prior to now, his name was once translated as Kyra.**

**Ouren Parldon is named after Oured, the capital city of the supernation Osea, in the Ace Combat series.**

Kyra: What the hell is this shit!?

Ouren: Yeah, what gives?!

Sgt. NoOb: Woah woah woah, what's the issue here?

Kyra: Our deaths, that's what! We're not some unskilled mooks like the rest of the nameless kooks in the series proper, you know!

Ouren: Damn right! We've got rights as main characters!

Sgt. NoOb: Ah, well... you know what kind of setting you're in?

Kyra: What do you mean?

Sgt. NoOb: You're in a sidestory setting.

Ouren: And so?

Sgt. NoOb: And so I don't need to cater to viewership. Come, minions! I'll ressurect you for some cheap heartstrings before killing you off again!

Kyra: You wouldn't-!

Ouren: Nooooooooooooo!

Tachatsky: You guys seem to be awfully lively over there...

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 35<strong>

**I initially wanted to write a teaser of what was to happen after the Second BWV, but seeing as I've yet to complete the second third of my works, I held it off, for now. Suffice to say, it was, in an almost literal sense, bringing back the dead, and I wasn't sure if some of them should remain, or who should be brought back.**

Sgt. NoOb: It's the end! Popping champagne!

Ray: Yeah!

Aleiya: Toast! To a successful run!

Kelvin: Aw, I wanted a part in the next work too.

Sgt. NoOb: You ARE a key feature of Ray's past, after all.

Kelvin: Yeah, but I would have liked a talking role. Even Mendez gets a rerun.

Mendez: I was a character in the work long before you were concepted, boy.

Kelvin: Yeah, but you're not a key character. Ha!

Alan: Well, I am. I was there even before Mendez, although my first appearance may not make it apparent.

Kelvin: Ugh.

Nain: You weren't even originally part of Ray's backstory. You're getting a pretty big boost into the background materials for this.

Houjou: W... will I appear in the new work again?

Sgt. NoOb: No.

Houjou: Uweeeeeehh...

Aleiya: Oi, don't bully my subordinate!

Sgt. NoOb: You're not making an appearance, too.

Aleiya: What?!

Sgt. NoOb: C'mon! You're like, the de facto main character of this story! You have an entire arc devoted to you! That's more than what anyone here could ask for.

Aleiya: Well, that's not much when you have Grace over there who's made just as many appearances, and is going to be a recurring character in the new work as well.

Grace: *_hic* _Oh, shut up... *_hic*_... I still... *_hic*_ didn't kill anyone important in the *_hic*_... end... now everyone will think I'm a paper tiger... *_hic*_...

Fredric: That's some shit endurance you have there, G- ow, OW! Don't kick m- OW!

Kaguya: You guys are a right merry bunch, eh?

Zekiyes: Oh, stow it. Marked characters shouldn't be here! Get preparing for the next work!

Patricia: Someone's bitter, nyah hah hah hah~!

William: You're one to talk. You're in the same boat as her! The sum total of your mentions amount to less than one full chapter!

Patricia: Nyeh~. At least I'm not dead!

William: Why you insolent little c-

Takimi: Woah, woah, cool it, 'sarge!

Gerald: Man, 'Sarge, I wanna drink in peace!

Lily: Now, now. Your chapter was a great shot, Will, so rest easy.

William: Humph. I'll let her go only because you said so...

Gerald: He's totally leashed, huh.

Takimi: Like a tank in my hands.

William: You guys-!

Enra: Hey, I wanted to ask about the initial draft-

Sgt. NoOb: Okay, time's up!

Enra: Hey!

Sgt. NoOb: Well, whatever it may be, you're all contributed in some way or another in laying out the groundwork for the next work, so I'll concede this time, and you're free to pile me with questions for this short period of ti - wait, one at a time, one at a time, o - aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!


End file.
